Category Archives: Fantasy

books, Dark fantasy, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

A Tide of Black Steel (Age of Wrath 1) by Anthony Ryan

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Stars: 4.5 out of 5

This is epic fantasy at its best – dark, gripping, with compelling characters facing hard challenges.

I love stories based on Nordic and Viking settings, but I read a few disappointing ones as well. Crafting a compelling world based on an existing mythology requires a lot of research and respect for the original setting. I bounced off a few books that did this poorly. Thankfully, Anthony Ryan managed to take the Nordic elements that we know and love and make them his own. The result is a living, breathing world with different nations that feel different in culture, religion, and worldviews. I had fun discovering the different corners of this world along with our protagonists.

I also grew to really care about all four of the narrators we follow in this book. Each of them is different, with a distinct personality, flaws, dreams, and fears. They felt alive and complex. Not always good and righteous, but I could empathize with all of them. And since I grew to care for them, I was also invested in their fates. Whether it was Thera trying to do her duty to the Sister Queens, or her brother Felnir chasing an impossible errand in the hopes of regaining lost honor, or Ruhlin, who has to fight other prisoners to survive, but also fight with the beast within him to keep his humanity.

As far as the story goes, this is the first book in the series, so it serves more to set up the stage than give us any kind of resolutions, but from what I see, the story will be brutal, because the enemy is ruthless and relentless, and the only goal they have is to subjugate and destroy. It is rather fascinating to see how two nations that started believing in the same gods and having a similar culture could turn out so different. 

My only issue with the story is that I find it hard to believe that the enemy has so many spies everywhere. This points towards a campaign that was years in the making, because some of those spies ended up in very high places, so they must have been sent to infiltrate all the power structures in the target countries at least a decade or two before the events of this book. Yet nothing that we have seen from Ruhlin’s point of view indicates an authority structure capable of such advanced planning. Granted, he has only seen gladiator arenas and slave pens (and people who run those), so his experience is not all-encompassing. 

I am definitely looking forward to picking up book 2 and learning more about this world. I also very much hope that our four protagonists will be okay, even if we left several of them in rather dire straits at the end of book 1.

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

books, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Reviews

The Market of 100 Fortunes (The Legend of the Five Rings) by Marie Brennan

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Stars: 5 out of 5

I never played the Legend of Five Rings games before or even heard of them, but you don’t have to do that to enjoy this book. The story stands on its own two feet even without being attached to a larger franchise. I also didn’t know that this was book 3 in Sekken and Ryotora’s adventures, so I will definitely go back and read the previous two books, because I like the characters and want to know how they got to the point they are at now.

I enjoyed this book tremendously! I love Japanese culture and folklore, and this world is heavily inspired by it, so reading about different Fortunes, spirits, and yokai was an absolute delight. The Market of 100 Fortunes was a delightful place to explore, both the human side of it and the supernatural one. I must admit that I hadn’t heard of the tsukumogami before I read this book, but the idea that objects used for 100 years can gain consciousness or even a soul is interesting. Makes you think twice before being mean to your umbrella, huh?

I think the biggest strength of this book is in its characters though. Sekken and Ryotora are complex individuals with their own quirks, needs, and wants, but it’s their interactions that bring the spark to this book. You can feel the care and love they have for each other. They are trying to navigate this very difficult condition they are in, where they literally share one life force between the two of them, so they have to be very careful how they draw on that power so as not to drain the other person. I like that the best solution to live with this condition is acceptance and harmonization between the two. And they do it through performing tea ceremonies! All tea lovers around the world unite!

The supporting characters are just as likable. The small but stubborn Kuzu, as resilient as the weed she is named after. Or Meiro, who risked everything, including her career with the Emerald Magistrate, to follow an obscure prophecy and helped our heroes immensely along the way. Even some of the tsukumogami have distinct personalities.

All in all, this was a very fast and delightful read, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I will definitely go back and read more about Sekken and Ryotora, and I will check out other stories set up in the Legend of the Five Rings universe as well.

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

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Dead Witch on a Bridge by Gretchen Galway

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Stars: 3.5 out of 5

Though I wasn’t particularly fond of the protagonist initially, she grew on me by the end of the book. This is a pretty cosy urban fantasy story about witches, wellsprings, fae, and murder. Yes, there is murder(s), but there are no gory descriptions, so it’s all pretty PG-13.

All in all, it was an enjoyable read, though I found Alma to be very gullible and rather clueless for the better part of this book. You would think that with her horrible upbringing, she would be less trusting of people. And speaking of upbringing, dear old dad doesn’t win any awards there. But when your only parent is a known thief who only cares about himself, I would think you would develop a healthy distrust of other people, seeing how even your dad probably lied to you and betrayed you over and over again in the past.

I did like that Alma stopped wallowing in her self-pity and actually started developing her magical abilities as the story progressed, and that she finally decided what kind of witch she wants to be. Which is one that doesn’t need the approval of the Protectorate to feel important and worthy.

The central mystery wasn’t particularly complicated, and I admit that I knew right around the memorial service scene who the villain of the story was, but it was still pretty entertaining. And the dog survives until the end, so that’s an added bonus!

I had a pleasant time reading this book, but I don’t know if I am invested enough to continue with the series.

books, Fantasy, Reviews

The Soul of Chaos (Litanies of the Lost Star 1) by Gregory Wunderlin

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DNF at 30%

It’s not a bad book, but I just couldn’t get into it. The worldbuilding is almost non-existent, and I didn’t mesh with the characters.

I don’t mind being thrown into a story off the deep end and having to figure out the world and the rules… as long as the author provides that information eventually. But 30% of the way in, I still don’t know how magic works in this world. Or what those ancient cities Rurik and his crew dig up mean in the grand scheme of things. Or how it relates to his sister’s chapters and the attempted coup that’s happening there. Who are the Voidtouched? Where do they come from? What is that ancient city and the magic ring Rurik puts on? No clue.

I don’t even know the political system of this world. Up until the ambush, I was convinced that Solara was the marshall for the Iskarion family. Or why the only heir to the family had to flee her home in order to save them all.

It’s hard to follow a story when you don’t know the stakes. And you can’t determine the stakes if you don’t know how this world is organized. Are the runes and portals a normal occurrence in this world? Is Rurik’s ring something special that grants him extraordinary abilities? What are shapers and what do they do? No clue, because I don’t know how magic works in this world.

I also wasn’t particularly interested in either of the two POVs – Rurik and his sister, whose name I can’t even recall anymore. I could have sat through confusing worldbuilding if I was invested in the characters, but I wasn’t.

The writing is also rather stilted, especially when it comes to dialogue. I caught myself rolling my eyes a few times at how unnatural the dialogue sounded, but I decided to quit when I found myself skimming through fight scenes. If even that wasn’t enough to keep me engaged, it was a lost cause.

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

books, Ghost Story, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Ghost Detective (Myron Vale Investigations 1) by Scott William

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Stars: 4 out of 5

This was a surprisingly good book, though not what I expected when I started reading it. I mean, it’s classified as a mystery book, and even though yes, we have a private detective investigating a possible murder, the book isn’t really about that.

This book is about human connections and ties that bound. About love and hate, and everything in between that can spark between two people and can often transcend death. It’s about how we often hurt the people we love, or stay in a toxic relationship because we still love the person hurting us.

I was actually surprised at how much I liked Myron Vale, our protagonist. If you think about it, his life is a bit of a nightmare. He can see ghosts… all of them… all the time. Not only can he see them, but he can also hear them, and smell them, but he can’t touch them. But more importantly, he can’t tell the difference between the dead and the living. To him, they all feel real. The only way for him to differentiate the living from the dead is to touch them. And touching strangers is kind of frowned upon in our society.

I could understand the depth of despair he descends into after the shooting when he realizes that his not being able to differentiate between the living and the ghosts means he can’t do his job as a police detective anymore. When he can’t tell which treat is real and which is just a ghost, he can’t react quickly and efficiently. Worse, he can put his partner in danger.

I wasn’t particularly fond of Billie, but the more I learned about their relationship, the better I understood her as well. Theirs is the perfect example of a love that has turned toxic, but neither is willing to end the torment. In a way, I’m glad about her decision in the end.

The murder mystery case that Myron is paid to investigate in this book isn’t really all that interesting or mysterious, but it was never the emphasis of this book, just a vehicle for the story.

I do have some questions though. Like why did the priest want Myron to drop the case? Why did he imply that if he followed through with it, some entities in the ghost world might consider him a threat and might even eliminate him? This is never brought up again. Maybe this will become important in the following books in the series, and I think I will check out book 2.

books, Fantasy, Reviews

Dead Country (The Craft Wars 1) by Max Gladstone

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Stars: 3 out of 5

I love the world of the Craft that the author so carefully crafted (pun totally intended). However, I didn’t love this book as much as I loved the previous ones in the series. 

It took me a while to figure out why. This book has all the right ingredients: a compelling protagonist (and I love Tara), a mystery that threatens something she cares about, so the personal stakes are front and center, and another facet of this complex world carefully painted and shown to the readers. I should have loved this as much as I loved the previous books! But instead, this book left me mildly irritated while I was reading it, and a bit dissatisfied when I finished.

The biggest reason is that, as much as I like Tara Abenati, she shines when given good secondary characters to bounce her ideas off of. Even though the previous book was mostly about Kai, Tara’s brief appearances were memorable. Or her interactions with Abelar, Shale, and Selene in Alt Columb. Characters make good stories, and good characters make excellent ones.

Unfortunately, secondary characters are sorely lacking in this book. And by that I mean the relationship that is front and center in this story – the one between Tara and Dawn. I was actually looking forward to seeing how Tara in the role of a mentor for once. To see how she would approach this responsibility and what kind of teacher she would choose to be. And the answer is – a rather boring one. 

Yes, I understand that the theory of the Craft is important to the story, but I think the lectures are a bit overdone here. It bogs down the story and kills the momentum. I mean, there is literally nothing going on in this book between the first attack of the Raiders on Tara’s village and the last stand during which the Father is kidnapped. And that’s about a third of the book. I admit that my attention started to wander in that section, and I had to put the book away for a bit and read something more exciting before I came back to it.

It would have been okay if Dawn was a more fleshed-out character. As it stands, we don’t know anything about her apart from the fact that she wandered onto this farm with her father, and was not treated well after he died. We don’t know about her dreams, her fears, or what she is like when she isn’t trying very hard to be the best student Tara could want. Try as I may, I can’t picture her in my head. She is not a person, but a concept. I don’t feel a connection to her like I felt for other characters in previous books. 

And without that connection, everything that happens in the end of the book, and it supposed to have the impact of a gut punch… feels flat. 

Same with Tara’s home village. I know I was supposed to grow to care for it by the end of the book and understand why Tara would fight so hard to save it, but I was mostly irritated with everyone instead, including Tara. And since I didn’t care for the stakes, I wasn’t fully invested either.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a solid entry in the Craft series and it advances the story. It’s just not the strongest entry to date.

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

books, Fantasy, Reviews

The Ruin of Angels (Craft Sequence 6) by Max Gladstone

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Stars: 4 out of 5

I love coming back to this world. It’s so rich and complex, and every book shows us a new facet of it. I feel like each book gives me more puzzle pieces to a giant picture that I’m assembling by reading the series.

In this book, we reconnect with Kai from Five Fathoms Deep, and she is away from her island in a city she doesn’t understand or particularly like, trying to help her estranged sister. Well, first Kai reluctantly meets with her sister and refuses to help her, but then she spends the rest of the book trying to rectify that error.  I missed Kai. She is a very good character. She isn’t a Craftswoman, she doesn’t have much personal power. She is a priestess to idols made by men from scratch to store their soul stuff in. And very recently a real priestess to a new Goddess. She is out of her depth in this strange and broken city where the God Wars started, and where the first Craftsman is still frozen in time, dying but not dead, tearing the world apart. 

I loved this city. Both the Alikand that was lovingly preserved in the books and stories of its citizens and the broken Dead City where the war was still being fought in infinity, with both sides endlessly dying but not quite dead. And the strange order of the squid city that was so foreign to both the other cities, but was necessary to keep the wound of the Dead City from destroying the rest of the world. I am happy that Kai found a solution that preserved Alikand in the end.

I have one issue with this book – it dragged a little bit in the beginning when the heist of the train was being organized. We spent too much time with Kai’s sister, and I didn’t particularly like her as a person. Yes, I understood her motivations by the end of the book, and I could even sympathize, but I still think she could have handled all of this better if she stepped on her pride and asked for help, instead of trying to play everyone around her. You could argue that she caused most of the problems she worked so hard to solve afterward.

I was happy to see Tara again since she is by far my favorite character in the series, but she doesn’t play a very big role here. She helped where she could, but was mostly relegated to the background. Which I understand. This is Kai’s book. And the Blue Lady’s, because she finally came into her full powers here. The Goddess of thieves and street children, and lost and forgotten people, the fleeing, the downtrodden. The one who ate the Wastes. 

What I love the most about this series is that despite some horrible things that happen to the characters in the books, there is always a hopeful note in the end. Kai and her sister finally make peace, and the poppy fields around Alikand are blooming once more.

Onward to the next book in the series.

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer

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Stars: 2 out of 5

I was very excited about this book because the blurb gave me the same vibes as the Wayward Children series by Seannan McGuire, and I loved the first few books in that series. Unfortunately, this didn’t live up to the expectations.

One of the reasons is that the story takes too long to get going. We don’t travel to the magical world until almost halfway into the book, so everything before then is set up. That would be fine if the pacing of this section wasn’t so sluggish. I found myself yawning and wanting the author to get on with it on more than one occasion.

My other issue is that I didn’t particularly like the writing choices in this book. The interruptions by the “Narrator” were extremely off-putting and yanked you right out of the story every time they were inserted between chapters. 

Another issue is that I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, so I wasn’t invested in their stories. This is particularly true for Jay and Raif. The author sets them up as these star-crossed lovers destined to be together but separated by circumstances, but that didn’t work for me. Call me old and cynical, but I find it hard to believe that Jeremy would pine for his high school sweetheart for 15 years after the fact. I mean they were 14 when everything happened and were only together for 6 months. Are you telling me that he couldn’t move on? Yeah, not buying it. Same goes for Raif who didn’t even remember those 6 months or that he was in love with Jeremy. 

And I might have been okay even with that if those two characters were interesting. As it stands though, they behave like they never left their teenage years, even though both of them are in their thirties in this book. I’m sorry, that’s not how thirty-year-old people in general behave, not unless they have serious developmental issues. Which I could understand in Raif’s case, because he had amnesia and carried a hidden trauma because of that all those years, but Jeremy seems like a well-adapted individual who traveled the world and saw plenty of good and bad stuff. What’s his excuse for behaving like a hormonal teenager? That’s why I feel like this book reads like a young adult book, even though it’s not marketed as such.

I have nothing much to say about Skya or Emily because they serve more as plot devices than actual people, so their characterization is non-existent. 

My biggest issue with this book is that this fairy tale has no “teeth” – nothing truly bad happens to any of the characters. Everything is too easy and harmless. At no point in this story was I worried about the characters or the decisions they had to make. And since the stakes aren’t all that important, nothing feels earned. Good fairy tales know that there is darkness as well as light in the world, and that to have heroes, there needs to be dragons. Heck, Skya even talks about that in the book! Unfortunately, the author loved her characters too much to truly make them suffer, so her dragons were nothing more than tame lizards, easily defeated.

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

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Red Delicious (Siobhan Quinn 2) by Caitlin Kiernan

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Stars: 2 out of 5

This was a letdown from book one, to be honest. I liked Quinn in the first book – she was foul-mouthed and irreverent, and as far from a typical urban fantasy protagonist as you can get. It was fun and refreshing. Unfortunately, the author went all in on that concept in this book. And this is the case in which too much good stuff spoils the brew, at least in my opinion.

Quinn is so snarky, vulgar, and unapologetically evil in this book that it stops being funny and gets rather annoying. Why would I care about what happens to her in this book if she is no better than any of the bad guys? If she is, in fact, also a bad guy who admits that she loves playing with her food and gets drunk on the terror and suffering she causes as much as on the blood she drinks? I like my anti-heroes at least somewhat redeemable. Oh, and that “yeah, I’m a monster, that’s what monsters do, get over it” attitude the author chose to endow her with doesn’t help much either.

My other issue is the constant breaking of the fourth wall Quinn does in her narrative. It’s fun when it’s done once or twice, but when it’s continuous, it gets old fast. Especially when you insert a freaking short story in the middle of the story… That dampens the enjoyment just a tad.

But the biggest issue I have with this book is just how stupid all the characters are. Yes, Quinn repeated several times that a detective she ain’t, but she can at least try to use her brains once in a while, no? Or all those other high and mighty demons, necromancers, and adjacent who want the magical dildo, what exactly was their thought process behind all this? Sit on their hands and wait until the artifact drops on their lap? Throw the most retarded of Mr. B’s minions at it and see if she can find it? That’s a bold strategy, let’s see if it pays off for them.

I kept waiting for Quinn to at least try to use the few brain cells she hadn’t fried with drugs in her past life to try to investigate this, but she never did. I mean, there is no real mystery in this story, no plot Quinn has to puzzle over. She just stumbles from one deus ex machina event to another (and even jokes about it, ha-ha) until she is miraculously alive in the end. And by the way, the author never even tells us how she manages that particular feat, probably because she ran out of ideas on how to make it plausible.

In the end, I was mostly irritated by the story and couldn’t care less who ended up with the magical dildo. Also, why would anyone even want this thing in the first place? It’s cursed. Whatever fleeting bliss it gives you, you forget the moment it’s over, so what’s the point? 

More importantly, I grew more and more irritated with Quinn, to the point that I didn’t even care how the story would have ended. I mean Quinn tells us halfway through that she survived to tell the tale, so even that suspense is gone out of the narrative.

As it stands, I have no desire to pick up the next book in the series.  I believe that Siobhan Quinn and I will be parting ways right here.

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

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.