Review: The Bone Ships by R.J. Barker

The Bone Ships by R.J. Barker
My rating: 2.8 of 5 stars
Publication Date: September 24, 2019


As a longtime fantasy reader, few things annoy me as much as writers who needlessly invent words. I don't mean words for new concepts, new animals, new magical elements, things like that; I mean word substitutions that serve no logical purpose. Saying "sither" instead of sister. (Still using "brother", though!) Saying "Skearith's Eye" instead of "the sun". An endless slew of Those Dreaded Compound Words---we all know and fear them!---when the author slaps two or more unrelated words together to describe an object that probably doesn't need a name to begin with, attempting to dazzle us with their worldbuilding skills while only succeeding in ripping us out of the story.

The Bone Ships sins greatly in this regard, and it sins right from the start. The sheer quantity of unnecessary invented words operates like the story version of a speed bump; just as you start getting into the story, whoops! Here's another string of nonsense words whose only purpose is to force you to stop and figure out what the hell is being described. By the time you return to the story proper, all sense of pacing and plot and character development has metaphorically tumbled off the cliff. (The fact that most of this story takes place on a ship, which already has lots of unfamiliar elements, does not help matters.)

The story is uncomplicated. Ship captain ('shipwife', all ships here being dubbed as male) Joron Twiner loses a fight (and command of his ship of condemned criminals) to the famous Meas Gilbryn, and ends up serving as her second-in-command on a quest to save the last known arakeesian (a sort of sea dragon, a long-thought-extinct race whose bones are used to make ships), hopefully bringing peace between two warring seafaring nations in the process. Many and sundry things happen along the way, few of which held my attention for any length, leading to a somewhat anticlimactic ending and a setup for Book 2.

Part of me wonders if I'd have enjoyed this more had the story been centered on the island archipelago, not on a ship. Because the politics of this society are, if not always the most logical, certainly more enthralling than the action on the open seas: in this world, much of the population is born deformed in some way, and political power is held by women who prove their 'strength' by giving birth to unblemished children and surviving the births, (and by the men who service them sexually). Each firstborn child is sacrificed to the ships, creating magical 'corpselights' that the population believes are necessary to power the ships, even though ships exist that have no corpselights and everyone knows those work just fine. They also seem to assign jobs to the malformed based on what they've lost: lose a foot, you become a cobbler. Lose a hand, you have to sew. Like I said, this is not the most logical society in the fantasy genre, but I think you really can't go wrong with human sacrifice and a fertility-based political system, at least when it comes to the entertainment factors.

Overall, this was just not my cup of tea.

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

Review: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publication Date: September 10, 2019

I cannot even conceive of a reader who could hear about Tamsyn Muir's swashbuckling debut Gideon the Ninth without immediately lunging for a copy. It is literally beyond my comprehension that any sane person could hear that there exists a book about an intergalactic empire of space necromancers and just, like, shrug it off. Go about their day, whistling a jaunty tune, not reading about the lesbian necromancers in spaaaaaaaace.

Alas, for those sad souls that have been doing just that, know this: in a beautiful castle ten thousand years dead, the undying Emperor has gathered the heirs to the eight ruling Houses and their sworn cavaliers to battle it out for the ultimate prize: the immortality of a necro-saint, and a place at the Emperor's side. Through much and assorted fuckery, the hilarious and delightfully obscene master swordswoman Gideon Nav ends up as cavalier to her nemesis Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the House of the Ninth, the House that even the other Houses dread. (Which says quite a lot, as this is an intergalactic empire literally ruled by necromancers.) Bitching merrily the entire way, Harrow and Gideon descend upon the castle of the First House hoping for power (Harrow) and freedom (Gideon), only to find a vast labyrinth of ancient and eldritch secrets, byzantine politics, and more skeletons than any sane person could ever want, in places that skeletons should never, ever be. 

Seamlessly blending the hilarious with the macabre and the scientific with the magical, Gideon the Ninth is a true tour de force, the sort of book that cries out for a sequel. (And one's in the works, thank goodness.) The characters practically do somersaults off the page, written with a lightness of the soul that's more Addams Family than Stephen King, though the blood and body count are definitely more the latter than the former. You will love Gideon, or you will show yourself a liar. And you will love her world, bones and viscera and all. It's weird and wild and wonderful, and now that I've finished it I want nothing more than to read it again from the start. 

Murder and mayhem and madcap hilarity; what more could a reader want?

Review: To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publication Date: September 3, 2019


Becky Chambers is one of those writers whose star in the science fiction world definitely seems to be waxing, so when I got the chance to review a shorter work of hers, I was excited to give it a whirl. I'd picked up her debut The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet a while back, only to put it down a quarter way through; not because it was bad---it seemed well-written---but because something about the plot, the voice, just didn't grab me. I always intended to pick it back up, but . . . well, the world is vast and so is my TBR pile. "I'll pick it up again tomorrow," I told myself, and of course tomorrow never came.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a standalone novella, following four astronauts sent on a crowdfunded deep-space exploration mission to explore a series of worlds light-years away from Earth. Via our narrator Ariadne, we follow the joys and heartbreaks of their discoveries, the introspective and social narrations of their interpersonal conflicts, and we sit silently beside them as the slow, creeping realization hits that, back home on Earth, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

There's a lot to like here. The worldbuilding is fantastic and the writing is vivid; that perfect exhilaration, that crucial sense of wonder, is tangible whenever the story delves into the team's scientific adventures. Chambers isn't one of those authors who writes about a scientific expedition but handwaves away the science, which I really enjoyed. Many sci-fi authors can get tedious in those portions, but that never happens here, and that alone bumped this up a star.

There are flaws, however. For a foursome that never has any conflict rising above the level of passive aggressiveness, there's a bit too much introspection here, or so I felt. Some of those parts dragged a bit. And part of the ending, I thought, followed a logic stream that I found completely unrealistic. It kind of pulled me out of the story, because they end up making a decision that just seemed utterly bizarre to me. (And the fact that our narrator spends so much time explaining it . . . that that was necessary in the first place is a hint that the decision itself doesn't flow naturally from what came before it.)

But ultimately, that was probably a minor thing. Melancholy and vibrant simultaneously, To Be Taught, If Fortunate made me wonder if I should pick The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet up again. I think I probably will.

A big thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publication Date: October 8, 2019


In an unknown country, in an unknown time period, there sits an isolated, pre-industrial village known only as 'the county', where the name of the game is "Patriarchy, Patriarchy, Dear God What The Hell Is This Maddening Super-Ultra-Mega-Patriarchy?". Women are either wives, servants, or whores---but more often than anything they're corpses, seized and dismembered for the 'magic' that supposedly resides within their flesh, or sent to the gallows on paper-thin pretexts by the men closest to them. Before being forced into marriage or servitude, the village girls are sent off to spend a year---the titular "grace year"---in some unknown place in the wilderness. Not all of them will return. And those that do return, likely won't return whole.

THE GRACE YEAR is one of those books that hooks you on the first page, then drags you, kicking and screaming, through an obstacle course made of flensing knives and over a finish line set atop a briar patch. It's ostensibly YA, but vicious enough to get bumped up into the adult category. (Like many YA books, in my experience.)

What I loved: the writing, the psychological drama, the author's beautifully-done analysis of institutional sexism and her refusal to fall into the "all men are evil and all women are brainwashed" tropes I feared when I started reading. One thing I really liked is how a certain plot twist that I fully expected to occur (trying not to spoil too badly here) with the 'poachers' ended up never occurring; the control system the 'county' has instituted reaches far and reaches deep, and sometimes stories told to frighten people end up not being exaggerations at all.

What I didn't love: our heroine is oddly subservient to a particular character (as are other characters) despite there being certain reasons this makes no sense. Also, a romance occurs that I thought needed a bit more time to develop than it actually got (though overall I thought it was well-done).

Overall, I thought this was beautifully done.

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

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.