books, Horror, Reviews

The Possession (The Anomaly Files 2) by Michael Rutger

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

I loved The Anomaly, the first book in the series, and this one was just as good. Yes, the story ended up being a little bit out there, but the cast of characters more than compensates for that.

Yes, the characters are the strongest part of this book and this series in general. I love Nolan, and Ken, and Molly, and Pierre. They feel like real people, but more importantly, they read like real friends and even found family to each other. Their interactions are genuine, and you can see that even when they are making fun of each other, there is a deep affection behind the jokes as well. And when push comes to shove, they don’t hesitate to do anything they can to save and protect each other.

Kristi, on the other hand, I could care less about. In the previous book Nolan painted this picture of her as someone brilliant, much better at this journalist thing than he is. He made it sound like she was really good with people and had lots of friends and seemed like a nice person. Well, the reality we see in this book couldn’t be farther from that picture. Kristi comes across as self-centered and unwilling to listen to anyone else’s opinion. She does things without thinking them through and sometimes even when she knows that her actions will only make things worse. She also comes across as very judgmental of others while at the same time blind to her own shortcomings. Needless to say, I wasn’t sad to see her go away at the end of the book. 

And I think this particular characterization was intentional on the author’s part. I think he wanted to show that sometimes our love blinds us to the shortcomings of the people closest to us even when those people hurt us. Nolan spent most of the previous book regretting what happened between him and Kristi and wishing they could find a way of mending this broken relationship. I think he got the much needed closure in this book, even if it wasn’t the one he was hoping for. 

The story itself was intriguing and even horrifying in a rather mind-bending kind of way. I love how the author takes a real world mystery, like the walls found all over the United States. Nobody knows who built them or when, or even what purpose they are supposed to serve. And then the author builds this elaborate story around that one real fact. And honestly, his explanation isn’t any more farfetched than a lot of other conspiracy theories out there.

All in all, this was an enjoyable book, and I wouldn’t mind following Nolan and crew for another adventure if the author ever decides to continue this series.

books, Fantasy, Reviews

Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5.

This book had promise. I was intrigued by the premise and the worldbuilding, so I dived into the story with a lot of excitement. Unfortunately, it fell short in the end, at least for me.

The world is criminally underutilized and and not fleshed out enough. I understand that it’s hard to dedicate a lot of time to worldbuilding in a 129 pages novella, but a few more details would have helped make this world real. As it stands, there are simply too many questions left unanswered. 

Like are the Elect just normal humans or are they descendants of the angels? The Fallen are descendants of the fallen angels, and they retain some physical attributes of that parentage, but for the Elects, apart from their blue eyes, there doesn’t seem to be any divine treads in their physiology. So are they humans playing pretend to be the eyes and ears to a silent and uninterested God? No clue. 

Also, when is this story taking place? Right after Lucifer’s fall or after Armageddon, when the armies of Hell and Heaven clash on Earth? Is this ancient history or post-apocalypse? I know that it might not be relevant to the story, but inquiring minds want to know. Also, the whole civilization seems very steam-punkish, only instead of steam, they mine the body of a fallen angel, like carrion. 

But I think my biggest issue with this book is that I absolutely hated the protagonist. Granted, none of the characters in this book are saints to say the least, but Celeste takes the cherry on top of the cake. She doesn’t hesitate to lie and cheat and use anyone and everyone around her to obtain what she wants. Sad thing is, what she wants doesn’t exist. She painted a picture of her sister as this innocent damsel that is perpetually in distress, and Celeste is the dragon guarding her. And she tried to lock her sister into that role, then acts all surprised when her sister turns out to be nothing like that.  

She ends up alienating all her friends, even going as far as accusing one of her friend’s lovers of murder just to save her sister. She betrays the trust of her own lover and uses him for her goal, oh and she steals the prized invention of another one of her friends. All this to get what in the end? Nothing. Celeste ends up with everything slipping between her fingers like dust. No family, no friends, no loved ones, no home. And good riddance, I say. It’s hard to root for a protagonist you despise.

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

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

Dream of Death City (Red Kingdom 1) by P.J. Nwosu

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Stars: 4 out of 5

The Red Kingdom is a fascinating world. It’s dark, brutal, and unforgiving. The caste system is rigid and hopeless, to tell you the truth, and life is hard for anyone who is not a Sun Noble. Resources are scarce, violence is rampant, people are burned at the pyre for the smallest of transgressions, and if you managed to survive that, the black lung will take you to your grave in the end. It should be dark and depressing, right? And it is dark, but it’s strangely beautiful as well. 

You can see that a lot of love went into creating this world. I already had a glimpse of it in A Pale Box on a Distant Shore where we met some of the characters that Thora and Diem encounter in Death City. This book shows us a bigger glimpse of the Red Kingdom and the capital City of Pillars, but you can see that the Frontier and Death city is a favorite of the author’s.

And I can’t complain about it. It’s a wonderfully grotesque city and island where the harsh nature and living conditions, as well as the remoteness from the rest of the Kingdom and its rigid Red Doctrine have created a unique culture seeped in superstition and “low ways”. And it’s hard to blame the citizens of Death City when they have a corpse of a god lying in the waves just offshore, and dead giants walk the sea on hollow moon nights…

I liked the mystery our characters came to unravel as well. What seemed at first glance as a simple kidnaping of a Sun Noble’s daughter led them to uncovering a whole human trafficking ring. And transformed everyone involved in fundamental ways. Nobody left Death City the same as they arrived into it, though some didn’t leave at all.

So why did I give this book 4 stars instead of 5? That’s because I didn’t particularly like Thora, who is one of our main characters. Oh, I understand her motivation and her desire to be more than mere Dust, to prove herself to her masters and have a chance at doing more than scrubbing floors and cleaning bedsheets all her life. What I didn’t like is how selfish she is in her pursuit of that dream and how willing she is to sacrifice everything and everyone to achieve that goal.

Her accusing Diem of taking justice in his own hands and doing things an Investigator shouldn’t sounded very hypocritical when she is the one who planted evidence, obtained false eyewitness statements, and created a diversion that got a lot of people killed. Not to mentioned persuaded a colleague to go against direct orders and do something that she knew could put her in danger. And when it got that colleague killed, she raged at anyone BUT herself. Yes, she didn’t hold her head under the water or hung her from a tree branch afterwards, but Thora was the one who sent her to her death nevertheless. It’s that double standard Thora has towards everyone else that seems hypocritical to me. That self-righteousness when she is definitely in the wrong. 

But this is just a small gripe for what is an excellent book. I am definitely looking forward to reading more book about this world and seeing how things progress in the Red Kingdom and outside its borders.

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

books, Horror, Reviews, Zombies

Destroyer of Worlds (End Times 4) by Shane Carrow

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5.

This is the weakest book of the series so far. I got the feeling that the author had a good idea for the ending sequence, but didn’t quite know how to get his characters to that ending and pad the narrative enough to get a novel-sized book, so he inserted a lot of filler. I mean  A LOT. 

It seems like nothing happens for the first half of the book – everyone is just sitting around the big downed spaceship and twiddles their thumbs. That makes for a very boring narrative. Maybe the author was trying to show us just how stir crazy everyone is getting, but that fell flat for me. Also, even once Matt sets out on the Canberra to find the nuke, the story still progresses at a snails pace. They travel, then travel some more, then spend a couple months diving into the wreck to find the nuke and codes. There is no tension or danger honestly for about 80% of the book. Then all of a sudden everything picks up to a breakneck pace and happens all at once. Then it’s non-stop action until the ending that doesn’t let you take a breath and process what’s happening. 

Unfortunately, this explosive ending stretches my disbelief to the point of breaking. Are you telling me that there is this overwhelming military force that had been amassing  around the Canberra and nobody noticed a thing? Where did they get all the military equipment and fire power? How did they move all that across zombie-infested Australia without bringing a hoard of zombies behind them or making a heck of a lot of noise trying to eliminate them? They just pop out of nowhere like an evil deux ex machina. Not to mention that the fighter jets that make an appearance at the end of the book had to have been stationed somewhere relatively near. They can’t fly around indefinitely. Also, how do those groups communicate with each other? Are you telling me that nobody on the Canberra was monitoring radio traffic? I don’t buy this.

Also, for a zombie apocalypse book, this one has very few zombie encounters in it. The undead are almost an afterthought here, which also makes no sense. We were told in the previous three books that zombies congregate to places where humans are. That’s why all other refugee camps and cities were eventually overrun and infected.  Yet we have characters sitting in one spot for months, with more and more humans slowly congregating towards them… nothing. Where are the hoards of zombies that should be descending on their ramshackle camp? Heck, the characters aren’t even worried about that enough to build walls or defenses…

I liked the explanation for the zombie plague and the bigger treat that looms over humanity, but I would like the author to stay consistent with the lore he established in previous books. I also hope that the next book will be more dynamic than this. I will eventually read it, since I bought the whole bundle anyway, but as of right now, it’s relegated to the middle of my TBR pile.

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

A Fool’s Errand (In All Jest 1) by D.E. King

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DNF at 25%.

I managed to finish 6 books since I started this one, but I had to force myself to come back to this time and time again, read about 10 pages, then loose interest again. I’m calling it quits because I haven’t opened this book in 4 days and have no desire to come back to it again.

The sad part is – there is a good story in this book, but it’s buried under mounds of useless minutiae that don’t do anything to drive the plot forward. Case in point: the book opens with a strong sequence where our protagonist has a run-in with local guards, finds a dying man, and is entrusted with a dangerous artifact… And then we have 4 chapters following a completely different character in another part of the world, sitting through a long meeting discussing school reforms, study rotations, and rations. any tension that the first chapter had built is killed at the vine.

The other problem is that the characters are very lukewarm. I would have followed them if the book was more tightly written, but I don’t feel like wading through pages upon pages of worldbuilding and often useless details just for the sake of these characters. I don’t care enough about them. As I said, any high stakes that were set up in chapter one were lost by chapter 5 because the story just can’t get started in earnest.

It’s sad, because as I said, there is a good book somewhere in there, it would have benefited from another content editing session and a 200 pages cut.

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

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

Winter’s Reach (Revanche Cycle 1) by Craig Schaefer

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Stars: 4.5 out of 5.

This is an interesting start of a new (to me) series with nice worldbuilding and depth. The world is reminiscent of Renaissance Europe with it’s domination of the Church, the Holy City and byzantine political intrigue. Everyone has an ulterior motive, there are plans within plans, and conspiracies abound.

I liked all the characters, which is an important criteria of just how much I will enjoy the book. They aren’t all good people. In fact, I would argue that most of them aren’t particularly good, and all of them are out of their own personal gain in some shape or form. But they feel real, with their own good qualities and flaws. And I understand their motivations. Which made me invested in their struggles.

I especially liked Felix who went through a crucible of fire in Winter’s Reach and emerged stronger, but also more ruthless. And Amadeo, the dying Pope’s confessor and oldest friend, who is thorn between trying to fulfil a promise he made to his old friend and the realization that putting his the Pope’s son on the throne will be the end of, well, everything. 

I loved that there are plots within plots, and some plots are thwarted, and others succeed… but not exactly in a manner the organizers expected. And nobody is safe. Bad things happen to seemingly good characters, and death can come in an instant. Seemingly good people can be forced to do horrible things and bargain with powers they barely understand. Nothing is black and white, but all different shades of gray instead. This makes the book interesting, and the stakes ever so high for our characters. 

My only complaint about this book is that there are a lot of plotlines left unresolved. This book just sets the stage for the series, so don’t expect a nifty little conclusion at the end of it. We are introduced to the world and the characters. The lines are drawn and the armies are gathering, but you will have to read the following books to understand how it all gets resolved. Which I am more than happy to do, by the way, because this series seems amazing, and I want to know what happens to my favorite characters… and whether or not the villains in this story get their just desserts.

books, Ghost Story, Reviews

The Ghosts of Lewis Manor by Marcia Armandi

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Stars: 2 out of 5.

The premise was promising, but the execution is disappointing. Overwritten prose. Some glaring historical errors that could have been avoided if the author had done a little bit of research before referencing certain things. The US Air Force wasn’t officially established until 1947. During the war they were part of the US Army. Yes, a small detail, but it matters, and Google would have given you the correct answer in like 2 minutes.

My other problem is that there were no characters I could root for in this book. I didn’t particularly care for Seraphina, and the supporting cast of characters aren’t very fleshed out. They are there to serve a purpose, or possess one distinguishable treat and that’s it. I particularly didn’t like the fact that the women in this book are all either older than Seraphina and thus fulfill the role of the town gossip or the wise “motherly” figure. And those who are her age or close are either dead, or rather unsympathetic. It’s the usual trope of portraying the heroine as better (wiser, more beautiful, virtuous, etc.) as everyone else by making other women less than her. Ugh, I hate that trope.

Also, the idea that London somehow has less active ghosts than a little town in New Forest is rather ridiculous. London has been inhabited for thousands of years and saw its fare share of tragedies and deaths. For someone able to see ghosts, the city would be positively teeming with them.

I didn’t particularly care for the romance between Seraphina and Ross either. It read rather lukewarm to me. Like the author just wanted to add a romance into the story to draw a parallel between Seraphina and Ross and Rose and Elliott. 

Though I must admit that the concept that ghosts might exist on different planes from each other and not be able to see other ghosts or communicate with those that aren’t on the same plane is interesting. I don’t think I saw anything like that before.

My biggest issue is with the identity of the killer though. I found that it came out of nowhere. There was no foreshadowing anywhere in the book before the big reveal, no crumbs disseminated throughout the story to make the protagonist, or at least the reader suspect anything. It was just “bham! He is the killer! Queue evil laughter”. It’s almost like the author decided to make him the bad man just for shock value. I am all for shocking reveals, but they need to be justified.

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

books, Reviews, science fiction, Space opera

Ghostdrift (The Finder Chronicles 4) by Suzanne Palmer

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

When we last saw Fergus, he had been saved from imminent and very painful death by the Asig, while he in turn saved the known galaxy. But all is not sunshine and roses in this book. Yes, Fergus is alive and even whole, but he is the most wanted man in the humanity settled cosmos, with a hefty price on his head and a lot of powerful enemies. So he has been in hiding. Which means that he has been alone with is cat and no contact with his family and friends. But when one such friend finally comes calling and asks for his help to free another friend from pirates, of course he will say yes.

Suzanne Palmer has a gift for creating likeable characters. I mean, we are dealing with a ship full of pirates here, yet I grew rather fond of all of them in the end. I think this is also due to the fact that Fergus always tries to see good in people, or at least to find ways to coexist with those he has no choice but to interact with due to various circumstances. It also helps that all of the characters are painted in different shades of gray and all have their own needs, wants and motivations. The villains aren’t even just for the sake of being evil, they have their own reasons behind their actions. The good guys aren’t always exactly good either. Everyone is human and bound to make an absolute mess out of things.

I also liked the main mystery of this book – a missing ship, possible rogue active jump points. A solitary planet in the middle of the Gap between two sections of the galaxy. Oh, and new kinds of aliens, who turn out not so evil in the end after all. Oh, and Fergus being his usual “interesting” self. We get more Asig as well, and get introduced to some of the other humans they changed.

I had a lot of fun with this story, and I am looking forward to following Fergus on his future adventures.

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

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Between Homes (The City Between 5) by W.R. Gingell

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

This was the best book in the series so far, at least in my opinion. Mostly because the ending of the last book brought home that it’s not all fun and games anymore. Pet made a serious choice and must live with the consequences in this book. I’m glad to see that she is sticking to her guns and decides to do what’s right, and to help where she can, even if she doesn’t have the looming presence (and protection) of two fae and a vampire at her back. Well, she has the vampire eventually, but that’s a different story.

I love that Pet continues to accumulate friends and found family around herself. Now she has Morgana and Daniel, and a whole werewolf pack to book, and mysterious kids on the roof of a mysterious house. I think this ability to empathize and make friends with the underdogs is her real magical power, not the fact that she can pull stuff out of Between into human world. She has a keen sense as to who is fundamentally a good person even if they did something stupid or harmful, and who isn’t, and she hasn’t been wrong so far.

The two cases that are investigated in this book are also very interesting. One is a killer that attacks fae and that nobody can see it seems, and the other is the case of a child that the Behindkind took a particular interest to. We learn a bit more about heirlings and harbringers and maybe who Pet really is and why she and her parents lived like they did. Hopefully, this will be explored further in consecutive books. 

I also liked that Pet managed to get her point across to Zero in the end and explain why helping humans mistreated by Behindkind maters to her. And maters enough that she was willing to live her home and the safety that the Troika offered her because staying would have betrayed her moral principles on that matter. 

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

The Phoenix Illusion (SPI Files 6) by Lisa Shearin

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Stars: 5 out of 5

This book starts with a bang… or with a literal building being dropped almost on top of our characters… and then catching on fire. Wow, that was an intense opening scene, let me tell you! The rest of the book is a fun romp in search of other vanishing buildings and figuring out who the baddies are and what they want. Side note, still not clear on that last part. 

This series continues to shine, and it’s because of the characters. I love Mac and her team. Heck, I even hooked my husband on these books, and he isn’t usually a big fan of urban fantasy. Mac, Ian, Rake, and especially Yasha have made a convert out of him. 

Mac continues to be a sassy, but competent protagonist who reads very human and relatable. Yes, she has powers, since she can see through glamor and cloaking spells, but she isn’t overpowered. She definitely isn’t a one woman army. She knows her strengths and weaknesses and can think on her feet. And kudos for bringing one of the previous book’s baddies down with a bottle of perfume and a handy storage closet. That was hilarious.

My only complaint is that at one point this book almost became a Tam and Rake show, and the other characters, including Mac, were kinda pushed into the background.  And there was very little Ian again, which was very disappointing. Yes, I love Mac and Rake as a couple, and their interactions are always fun to read about. But I also love Mac and Ian, and their partners/siblings relationship. I want to read more of their banter and how they bounce ideas of each other and have each other’s back during tough cases. 

But all in all, still loving this series, and I will definitely finish it. Also thinking about picking up the Raine Benares series afterwards.

My dreams and stories. The life of a writer.