Review: Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan

Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publication Date: August 20, 2019


A standalone sequel to the MEMOIRS OF LADY TRENT quintet, TURNING DARKNESS INTO LIGHT is reliant on its predecessors to, if not make sense---I think there's enough info for even a newbie to understand the gist of what's going on, if not necessarily care about it too deeply---then to give the reader some reason to read on. The first half was oddly dry, and though the story picked up in the second half, I didn't think it did so well enough to bump this up any higher than three stars.

The plot follows Isabella's twentysomething granddaughter Audrey`as she translates an ancient Draconean epic amidst much Scirland-based skullduggery. The story lacks the globe-trotting adventurism of its predecessors, but never really manages to replace that with anything equally interesting. (I almost wrote that the author squelched the mannerpunk elements, except that isn't strictly true; they're probably stronger here than in any book since A NATURAL HISTORY OF DRAGONS, it's just that Audrey cares so much less---and is bound so much less---than Isabella that they just feel absent.)

The author's choice to construct this as an epistolary novel just added to the dryness, I thought, as did her choice to write out *the entire Draconean epic*, along with the translators' notes, neither of which were really interesting enough (even to a devoted reader of the previous novels!) that I thought they really needed to be written out in full. Yes, there is a mystery involved . . . but at some point, it all started feeling like bloat.

I really, really enjoyed the characters, though I think I would've preferred to see them interacting with and in some different plot. (Also, this book made me wish for Jacob's seafaring adventures to get their time in the sun.) Cora, especially, was well-done, and the complexities of the Audrey/Mornett situation had a great deal of potential. But again, I felt the epistolary format sapped the character interactions of much of their vigor.

This is one of those novels that I think would've worked much better as a novella. Readers who haven't yet read the Lady Trent novels should absolutely start there, especially as this book contains a number of huge spoilers. Readers who haven't read the earlier works will, I think, have some difficulty getting through this one.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Howling Dark by Christopher Ruocchio

Howling Dark (Sun Eater #2) by Christopher Ruocchio
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publication Date: July 16, 2019


When EMPIRE OF SILENCE was first released, I read many reviews comparing it (favorably and unfavorably) to THE NAME OF THE WIND. And it occurred to me, after I sat down and actually read through it, what a hideously unfair comparison that was. How that sets the reader up for disappointment, and what a disservice that does to the author. Because a major reason THE NAME OF THE WIND is so popular is that it allows readers to live vicariously through Kvothe, to experience his many victories as if they were our own. Kvothe wins, you see; many battles, if not necessarily (or does he?) the war. And he racks up wins immediately, or near enough to make no difference. The story overflows with tidbits showing him outwitting his enemies, manipulating the world to his benefit, and such and sundry. And since Kvothe is a born genius/polymath, it's like that from the very beginning.

EMPIRE OF SILENCE, in contrast, was not a book dedicated to watching Hadrian outwit, outplay, or outfight the universe; it was a book, I thought, dedicated to dragging him through the mud. And every time you thought he was going to pull himself out of the mud, he just got hammered further and further down. It got to the point where I was forcing myself to keep reading, not because it was bad---it's an excellent book---but just because I as a reader was feeling Hadrian's pain, and it was hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel when Hadrian himself was constantly prophesying even greater failures to come. (It didn't help that this book is extremely lengthy, so the reader spends a lot of time watching Hadrian get kicked around. Yes, there's the idea of dragging someone down so you can build them back up . . . but Hadrian spends A LOT of time being dragged down. And the "picking himself up" part(s) seem much shorter than the others, and less frequent.)

Much of that dynamic continues into THE HOWLING DARK, if not always at the same . . . intensity? In the sense that Hadrian's "I am the hero in a fairy tale and Reality's just gonna have to deal with it" mentality continues, and though he wins out over Reality rather more here than he did in EMPIRE OF SILENCE, he's still not at Kvothe/Harry Dresden/Paul Atreides/etc. levels. (Though the ending gives reason to believe Book 3 will upend that, at least partially, in Hadrian's favor.)

We open with a time jump, passing over the early years of the Meidua Red Company's time as mercenaries and picking up after they overthrow a dictator and pick up some new recruits (an incident that seems important enough in-story that I actually looked to see if there was a bridging novella I'd missed). The quest for Vorgossos, and a peace we know will never come, monopolizes THE HOWLING DARK; I'll say little about how it plays out, but know that while it is definitely a slow burn, it is never, ever a boring one. By the end, we get a clearer sense of the board our game is played upon, and (possibly?) more about what sort of game is actually being played. To say nothing of what pieces are really in play.

One thing I love about this series is how deeply it plays with the notion of the devil and all accompanying facets. Hadrian's prose style is melodic---but never forget that, as Milton showed us, Satan is Creation's most eloquent child. Hadrian Marlowe's Lucifer connotations were clear to see in EMPIRE OF SILENCE, if somewhat underplayed thematically, but the comparison really gets jacked up to eleven in THE HOWLING DARK, and looks to go further still in future books. Free will is the name of the game, as are treachery and temptation, and Hadrian's role in all of these is crystal-clear as muck. (As an aside, I think the series would've been better served if it had played up the Lucifer/Devil themes of the narrative, marketing-wise, rather than comparing this to DUNE or THE NAME OF THE WIND or some other book that hits completely different character and story rhythms.)

One aspect I really adored, worldbuilding-wise, was the Luciferian tie-in with America. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to mention that the "Mericanii" play a role here (though I won't specify how), which makes sense: of all the nations of Earth, who has more in common with the beautiful, charming, tempting, "better to rule in hell than serve in heaven" Bringer of Light than America herself? There's something so delicious about how Ruocchio transmits the common elements of my culture into Luciferian horror, and even beyond, to something explicitly eldritch. (To say nothing of certain . . . other . . . cosmic horror elements. I just love cosmic horror. Space opera without cosmic horror is like tea without sugar.)

If books were food, THE HOWLING DARK would be Death By Chocolate: rich, decadent, inviting . . . but something it takes rather a long time to consume. I expected to have this review up a month ago at the latest, but I'd spend hours absorbed in the story, only to look up and find I'd only made it fifty pages. So pick this up, but be prepared to sink into the quicksand of the story; don't expect a quick race to the end.

Highly recommended, and I'm really looking forward to Book 3.

A huge thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Review: Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publication Date: July 23, 2019

A Jazz-Age fairy tale based on Mayan myth, Gods of Jade and Shadow is both tantalizingly original and inexpertly crafted, the sort of book that feels like it should have been far more exciting than it was. (Making it something of a prototypical 3-star book.)

Casiopeia Tun is a (lampshaded!) Cinderella, a poor relation used as an unpaid servant in her wealthy grandfather's household. After an encounter with her cousin (and tormentor) Martin, Casiopeia opens a locked chest and accidentally releases a weakened Mayan death god, partially dismembered by his jealous twin brother. Casiopeia then gets shanghaied on a quest to find the god's missing body parts, which takes her everywhere from the Yucatan to Baja California to the depths of the Mayan underworld. The story plays out exactly as you'd expect, this being a fairy tale, and also nothing like you'd expect, this . . . not actually being a fairy tale. Ahem.

The setting is tremendous, and is by far the book's best feature. Jazz-age Mexico and the Mayan underworld aren't settings that get used very often in fantasy works, so there was a freshness here that really drew the eye.

The characters swim between archetypes and complexity--intentionally so, as the book makes clear--but while some of them were well-done (the Martin/Casiopeia relationship was a classic fairy tale trope given a degree of depth and complexity that twisted it around a bit) many of the others, especially the variety of demons and sorcerers encountered along the way, felt wooden. (And I would have liked more development of the Caiopeia/Hun-Kame relationship, which felt a bit like it was following tropes so clearly that it didn't think it needed internal development of its own.)

Where the story fell hardest, I thought, was the prose. Something about the author's word choices kept clunking against my ear. Too many sentences just didn't really . . . ring true? It was the sort of thudding you often get from translated works, where the translator sacrifices prose flow in favor of meaning, and often ends up losing the meaning as well. (I realize this is not a translated work, I simply use that as an example of where I've encountered similar qualities.) And the prose style, which is clearly meant to evoke a sort of fairy-tale , too often comes across as merely dull, yanking the reader out of the story.

Overall, I really liked parts of it, but I just didn't love the whole.

I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Publication Date: June 4, 2019


There are books out there that you think you should love, and fully expect to love, but when you finally crack open the spine (or your e-reader of choice), you discover to your horror that the story's a bit of a slog.

That's Rotherweird in a nutshell. The entire time I was reading, a tiny voice in the back of my mind kept whispering 'you should be enjoying this!' To the point where I almost felt guilty about how difficult it was to get through each chapter. On the surface, the story sounds grand: a town founded by geniuses, an ancient conspiracy, oddball characters, alternate realms . . . but the whole thing is told in this sort of halting, dry tone that just sucks all the life out of it.

The story feels weirdly emotionless. We're given a vast cavalcade of characters---who I had little trouble keeping straight, oddly enough---but they're drawn with so little feeling that it's nigh-impossible to care about any of them. At one point a character is straight-up murdered, and it falls upon the reader's heart with the same emotional intensity as a tax audit. The prose is very 'tell, don't show,' with a sort of blase-ness that could perhaps have been meant as whimsical . . . but if that was the intent, it failed pretty drastically.

Overall, this just wasn't to my taste.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publication Date: September 10, 2019


This is a book to drown in.

January Scaller is precocious, adventurous, and sheltered, qualities that serve her poorly in the mansion of her father's robber-baron employer Mr. Locke, in an early 20th century America that looks down on those who aren't the 'right' color. And January most definitely isn't white . . . though what ethnicity she and her father actually are isn't quite obvious to anyone, for reasons that are (but shouldn't be) a mystery. She's seven years old when she discovers her first Door, one of many mysterious and magical gateways scattered in the secret places of this world, and steps through it to another world---and she's much older when the mysteries of the Doors, and her own family's past, crash down upon her life.

How many ways can I say how much I adored this book? The prose is lush, inventive, addicting . . . I found myself reading it as slowly as I could, savoring each perfect sentence, each effortlessly stunning turn of phrase. I was literally angry at the idea that this book would eventually end.

This is the sort of book that I just want to hand out to strangers. Possibly throw at them. Alix E. Harrow is going straight to the top of my auto-buy list, and I can't wait to see what she comes out with next.

A superb debut, and highly, highly recommended.

A huge thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Review: The Immortal City by Amy Kuivalainen

The Immortal City by Amy Kuivalainen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Publication Date: September 19, 2019


Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Dr. Penelope Bryne was publicly disgraced when she went public with research that claimed the legends of Atlantis were based on a real place, a la Troy, even though that struck this reader as a perfectly logical academic argument for her to make, and the whole "she's saying magic is real" assessment of the academic community was a giant non sequitur cause she never even implied that. When a woman is ritualistically murdered in Venice, with strange symbols scrawled around her, Penelope ends up heading to La Serenissima to consult with the police.

This book was . . . bland. After the first few paragraphs, I decided this would probably be a breezy fantasy-laden murder mystery---light, but fun. Well, light this certainly was, but the fun part ended up being nowhere to be found. The plot didn't just fail to grab me; things happen that are clearly meant to be major plot points, and all I could think while reading was "I am bored to tears". The plot feels like it has no stakes, even where it clearly should have stakes, and quite a few parts were, honestly, just very badly written. The author's sense of pacing was pretty nonexistent.

There is a certain sameness to the characters, a thinness, a superficiality; I didn't care what happened to them, and their dialog always sort of clunked against the ear. Everyone spoke in the same way, with the same voice, and that voice was . . . not like how people actually speak. The magical elements were handled in a weirdly pedestrian way, which . . . sounds pretentious, I know, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. Magic just sort of plops woodenly into the plot. There was no magic to the magic. I felt like I was reading about a billing argument in a dentist's office, not an ancient magical feud.

Overall, I'd say this was definitely a clunker. Not recommended.

Review: The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey

The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Publication Date: June 11, 2019


Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

There is nothing worse to a reader than a book with a great opening line and a terrible follow-through. And The Grand Dark has a fantastic opening line: "The Great War was over, but everyone knew another war was coming and it drove the city a little mad." That's a line with promise. That's a line that beckons you to read on.

And so I read on . . . and almost immediately, my eyes started glazing over. I'm not sure what the opposite of a gripping story is--a loose story? A slippery story? Words like "tedious" really don't capture the thing--but suffice to say, this is that. Things began happening in the last quarter or so, which isn't a compliment.

I bumped this up from one to two stars only because the writing, though numbing, is at least technically competent. I generally reserve one-star reviews for books that I legitimately believe shouldn't have been published as-is. This book is far from skillfully written, and it wasn't nearly as interesting as it meant to be, but at least it seemed professionally produced.

Overall: not recommended.