More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson; Unsuccessful Parody with Puns

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I had such high hope for Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearne and Delilah S. Dawson.  Hearne wrote the Iron Druid fantasy series and the recent A Plague of Giants (reviewed here) and this new novel is promoted as a “hilarious sendup of Chosen One narratives” full of “puns, flipped tropes”, cheese and a sassy goat.  Sounds like it’s going to be super funny good, or else really really bad.  Sadly it’s not good.

The novel starts out with a map full of strange place names – Retchedde, Sullenne, Muffincrumb and Gobbleneck – which got me interested right away.  I love fantasy books that need maps.  The map was the best part.  The pixie with one blue sock shoots her arrow of Chosen-Oneness to our supposed hero, the Farm Boy.  Farm Boy decides he needs to rescue the princess in her rose brier infested castle, and Gus, the talking goat, decides to come too.  So far it’s a bit stupid, but OK.

The novel follows the traditional quest narrative, where the fearless band of strangers coalesces into a group of friends, all working together to, to, to what?  Don’t know.  A couple of the band go to the witch to find a cure for the now-dead Farm Boy, the evil wizard visits the witch to steal her magic, the goat just wants to avoid the curry pot and the hunts lady is going because why not.

Evil wizard can make bread; his hunts lady is a prime klutz; the bard looks more like a rabbit than a girl and the warrior maiden doesn’t much like wearing chain mail bikinis.  These types of silly points need a light touch to make them funny and keep the book rolling along, but the authors keep beating the same points over and over.  How many jokes about cold chain mail bikinis can you listen to?  And how many times can you read about the talking goat and his pellets?  Or the budding romance between warrior maiden and rabbit-maiden-bard?  Or the incredibly clumsy and not real smart hunts lady?

The whole novel is like this.  A couple of the merry band die and the rest just keep going; in fact after the first one dies from poison mislabeled there isn’t even a pause.  He dies, they go.  The problem is that if you are parodying a quest then there must be some actual quest elements.

Kill the Farm Boy was obnoxious with stupid innuendo and jokes that appeal to 13 year old boys.  The parody didn’t work well because everything was a parody; the quest was no quest, the wizard is no wizard, the evil witch is not evil, the nastiness in the mines of Moiria (oh sorry, the Catacombs of Yore) is all illusion.

Kill the Farm Boy tries to be funny but it’s too pretentious and too asinine to make it work.

2 Stars

I received this for free in expectation of an honest review.

Tempests and Slaughter (The Numair Chronicles, Book One) – Vivid Fantasy by Tamora Pierce

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Tamora Pierce is best known for colorful fantasies for older teens with smart, strong female characters.  Tempests and Slaughter is the first novel of hers that I have read, and apparently the main characters as adults star in her novels in the same world.  It is a testament to Pierce’s ability to tell a story with likable characters who feel real, to develop a full fantasy world with magic, gods, empires and strange customs, that I did not realize Tempests and Slaughter is part of a larger story arc until I was writing this review.

I thoroughly enjoyed Tempests and Slaughter and the three main characters,  Arram,  Ozorne and Varice, all three teens in the Empire’s school for mages.  Arram is the son of traders from another country, with great talents.  Ozorne is the Emperor’s nephew and moving up in the succession, Varice is the only girl and not as prominent a character as Arram.  The book reads well on its own but clearly sets up a conflict between Arram and Ozorne.

Arram cannot abide the slavery endemic in the Empire nor can he stomach the gladiator games while Ozorne takes both these for granted.  Ozorne is about 7th in line to succeed the emperor as the story opens and talks about setting up a small estate to study magic and asks Arram and Varice to promise to join him.  As the book proceeds and Ozorne’s cousins die, he gradually abandons those peaceful dreams.  Arram is shocked when Ozorne says he dreams, not of a peaceful life of study, but to conquer the rest of the world – including Arram’s country.  Arram knows but does not want to believe that he will eventually have to leave Ozorne and make his own way.  The next novel may feature Arram and Ozorne.

Tempests and Slaughter particularly impressed me with the vivid world building.  We can almost see the dust and smell the rocks that Arram helps to move, we can hear the shouts and screams in the gladiator pits.  Pierce creates an intense setting that feels real.

The mage school is superficially peaceful, with students and teachers all pursuing scholarly work, except underlain with the assumption the mages will assist the empire.  They will heal the gladiators and the typhoid-suffering poor, brace the fallen rocks, clear the river of corpses.  The godlets visit certain scholars, notably the crocodile godlet requires Arram foster a sunbird he absconded with, something else guaranteed to cause trouble later on.

Overall Tempests and Slaughter is an excellent novel, with well-developed people, good dialogue that advances the plot and develops the characters, vivid setting and world building that constrasts with the surface placidity of the mage school.

5 Stars

Flicker, Ember in Space Book One by Rebecca Rode – Boring Science Fiction About a Clairvoyant Gypsy

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Rebecca Rode’s Flicker, Ember in Space Book One, features Ember, a Roma or Gypsy, one of the very few folks left on Earth after a mass migration a few centuries before.  Now the Earth is a tiny part of an empire that spans many star systems, ruled by the absolute Emperor whose will is enforced by ruthless military force.  Ember supports her father and herself by telling fortunes in the marketplace to tourists until ruthless General Kane kidnaps her for her clairvoyant skill.

The book is boring.  I read about 50% of the way through and skimmed the rest, hoping it would improve, but it doesn’t.  Ember should be a sympathetic character but I didn’t care one way or the other.  General Kane is odious, bloodthirsty, cruel, ambitious.  The author describes two societies, the Roma on Earth and the militarized world that Ember must face, and neither is appealing or admirable.  Basically there was nothing in the novel to engage one and make the reader feel part of the story.

2 Stars

Review: Witches Gone Wicked: A Cozy Witch Mystery (Womby’s School for Wayward Witches Book 3)

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Witches Gone Wicked is bad.  Lead character Clarissa is a witch wanna-be, newly hired to teach arts and crafts to young witch kin at Womby’s charity school.  The book could have been quite good, following Clarissa as she tries to teach art with $25 per year supplies budget to students who would just as soon stick her on the ceiling as pay attention.  Unfortunately the author chose to model Clarissa and the plot and the setting on the Harry Potter series.

Clarissa herself grew up ignorant of her witch heritage and now needs to learn fast; however no one wants to teach her because her biological mother was a powerful witch of the dark arts.  We don’t get a chance to get to know Clarissa as a person because she is too busy jumping to conclusions and flirting with the attractive wizard Julian (who is of course a Bad Man).

The witch kin in this series are half fae and half human (or their descendants) and have significant magic tendencies.  If they fail to master their magic then they are fair game for the fae to snatch for servants or the Tithe.  Wouldn’t this be an interesting idea to explore, to understand what’s involved, and possibly, how the witch kin can fend off the fae?    Author Sarina Dorie may cover this in other books in the series; in Witches Gone Wicked she chose to focus on Clarissa.  Clarissa’s magic affinity which is touch, which she experiences as extraordinarily sensual and powerful and any pain is unbearable.  She has power over others’ bodies too, should she learn to use it.

Most Amazon reviews are positive, with no ratings below 3 stars at this time.  This novel is not listed as YA although it may appeal more to younger teens than it did to me.

I received this for free in expectation of an honest review.

1 Star

The Glass Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg, Sequel to Paper Magician Set in Retro England

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Charlie Holmberg’s The Paper Magician (reviewed here) surprised me with its fresh take on elemental magic and the two main characters, Ceomy and her mentor Thane.  Holmberg follow up novel, The Glass Magician, is set immediately after the first book and introduces new heroic side kicks and new villains.  While The Glass Magician is good, it is not in the same league as The Paper Magician, primarily because it has more YA elements than the first.

In Paper Ceomy is brave and prudent and takes independent action only to save Thane’s life, and only when there is nothing else to do.  In The Glass Magician, Ceomy makes one dumb move after another, tries to go after Grath – unsuccessfully – despite being told not to, and gets her good friend into the mess.  The Ceomy vs. Villains situations comprise the bulk of the plot, something more typical of YA fantasy than stories aimed at adults.

Also typical of YA novels, Ceomy spends too much of the book worrying whether Thane loves her.  The romance was a nice plus in Paper, but it’s overdone in Glass, reducing mature, likable Ceomy to a silly girl.

I still enjoyed The Glass Magician, still liked Ceomy, Thane and the magic system.  I just didn’t enjoy it quite as much as The Paper Magician.

3-4 Stars

Mini Reviews – Science Fiction Books from So-So to Really Bad

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Remnants of Hope by Antoine Henderson, Science Fiction, Space Pirates

Remnants of Hope< is a freebie from an author launching his new novel, Rogue Star.  Remnants of Hope uses the same characters.

The main problem with this novel is the characters are lifeless.  We have the noble smuggler Taran, his friend?/lover?/second-in-command? former/current assassin Nadal-Ti, fearful alien technical genius Blurb and faithful android/ship’s computer Delta-811.  We never learn much about Nadal-Ti and the others are stock characters.

Plot uses a pirate attack, indigenous people whom Delta-811 can somehow understand, a strange and never-described star system with lots of planets and cut off from all other star systems.  The story never really comes together.

The writing is not bad but it’s also not very good.  I read it on vacation while dodging cold rain so managed to finish.  I will not look for further stories by this author.

3 Stars

Star Cat Origins by Andrew Mackay, Prequel Freebie for the Star Cat Series

Star Cat is a cute, clean longer novella that author Andrew Mackay gives away to introduce us readers to his Star Cat Feline Space Opera.  It is cute and sweet, with a five year old Jamie and his cat.  Jamie’s dad dies at the beginning and his mom is heartbroken; Jamie is too young to fully appreciate death but he’s not happy either.

The space program is desperate to find a way to respond to an unknown signal from Saturn, which may be a distress call, and notice that cats seem to respond to the message.  Jamie sees the ad asking cat owners to enter their cats in the Cat Trials, which is in Book 2, Star Cat: Infinity Claws

Star Cat is well-written but not for me.  If I were pre teen I’d probably like it.

3 Stars

Lunacy on Omega Station: A Pulp Superhero Space Opera (The Shattered Cosmos Book 0) by Chucho Jones


This is bad.  Really bad.  Ridiculous plot, ridiculous characters, poor writing, boring.

1 Star

Waning Chance (The School of Ancestral Guidance Saga) Book 1.5 by Thorn Osgood


In all fairness I did not read the first book in this series nor did I finish this one.  It was written OK, just didn’t seem to go anywhere and was depressing to boot.  I was curious about the Ancestral Guidance stuff and the portals but not enough to keep reading when my books-to-read pile grows ever larger.

2 Stars

Star Warrior (Star Warrior Quadrilogy Book 1) by Isaac Hooke

Star Warrior starts well but I had to quit about half through.  We have Tane, a farm boy who gets semi-kidnapped/semi-rescued by two people with unusual mental powers…  Wait.  This is familiar!

Author Hooke brings in some unique twists.  He imagines a parallel but opposite universe that has all of our stuff but no people.  We can visit there, remove things, take them back to our universe, use them, and not affect them here.  The problem is the folks who live in this opposite universe attack on sight and some of them are equally advanced as the farm boy’s world.  Interesting concepts.

I took this on vacation and simply lost interest.  First hero Tane acts dumber and dumber and more annoying by the moment.  I wanted to smack him upside the head and tell him to grow up!  The skill level nonsense is annoying too.  Apparently in Tane’s world one can purchase nanite injections to get new abilities or to augment existing abilities.  Tane is able to get injections that increase his dexterity and coordination, nice, huh?  Skill levels got boring about the third time, obnoxious by the seventh!

2 Stars

A Different Kind by Lauryn April

A Different Kind has an unusual lead character, Payton Carlson, head cheerleader, prom queen, the in girl, at least until the little grey men abduct her.  Payton rekindles an old friendship with the loner kid across the street, Logan, and discovers the Grey’s interest in her is not benign.

I got about half through A Different Kind and may go back and finish this one.  It is quite well written and author April develops Payton from a typical bratty popular kid into someone with more depth and character that I almost cared about.  It just didn’t quite tug my interest long enough.  Perhaps it’s a better read for a cozy winter evening.

 

Mini Reviews – Fantasy Books from So-So to Really Bad

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Scattered Seasons (The Season Avatars Book 2) by Sandra Ulbrich Almazan

Author Almazan tries to combine Regency-style romance with fantasy in Scattered Seasons, similar to Patricia Wrede in her Mairelon the Magician but doesn’t quite work.  Gwen is a noblewoman, betrothed to neighbor William (whose mother fits all the mother-in-law stereotypes) and also the Avatar of Spring in waiting.  She is infected by a cursed pottery shard that renders her unable to remember how to use her healing magic.

The characters are not too bad but the plot is far thinner than it needs to be.  Their ancient enemy is attacking the four season avatars in hopes of disabling their sponsoring “gods”.  In the bulk of the novel Gwen chases from one end of the country to the other to find her other three co-avatars in waiting, all while dodging her disapproving fiance and family; the actual action is at the end.

I ended up skimming the book, curious whether anyone was ever going to do something or we were just running around.  (I have had quite enough novels that waste hundreds of pages tromping from place to place.)  Also there was no map and the book had only hints of the enmity and world building.

The Afterword mentioned that book 1 in the series used the same characters as young people.

2-3 Stars

Death by Advertising by J. R. Kruz, Interesting Short Story that Just…Ends

Death by Advertising could have been, should have been good.  Tess’s longtime friend and business partner Judy is supposedly dead.  She announced it with a beautiful ad for the funeral home, an ad that had the funeral attendees sign up for their final packages in droves.  Judy was a marketing genius who worked with artificial intelligence to design unbelievably effective ads – as witness her funeral home copy.

Supposedly Judy has been cremated and her ashes scattered, but the doctor who signed the death certificate died the year before and the whole thing makes no sense.  Unless, of course, Judy is alive.  Or the AI cooked the whole thing up.

I was drawn in and curious what was going on.  Instead of getting more information, author J. R. Kruz simply ends the book.  Instead of an interesting novella we have a truncated short story that left me feeling gypped.

2 Stars because it has so much promise, 1 Star for the ending.

One Way Ticket by Alia Hess, Freebie Novella for the Travelers Series

One Way Ticket isn’t bad but it isn’t very good.  Protagonist Sasha is a ne’er-do-well who just lost the grandmother that he loved and who kept him more or less straightened out.  Sasha finds an website that claims to be able offer a semi-effective vaccine against North American Hemorrhagic Fever, the disease that killed 99% of the people in North America and is still deadly years later.

Sasha decides to go, even though he must leave the cat he loves, everything and everyone he knows, and despite knowing the vaccine has some unpredictable bad side effects or partial effectiveness.  It was interesting to watch a young man decide to take a huge leap into the unknown, away from the heavy government surveillance, drinking, scummy friends.

I might try reading one of the longer books in the Traveler Series as One Way Ticket has promise.  Author Alia Hess gives this away to entice readers to her longer novels and mentions the second book, Chromeheart, reintroduces Sasha.

3 Stars

Showdown (Wyrd West Chronicles Book 1) by Diane Morrison, “Weird West” Fantasy/Western/Cattlepunk Novelette

The author tries something new, combining post apocalyptic story with westerns with fantasy, and it’s interesting enough to read but not enough that I want to read any more.

Kudos to the author for making her setting feel real, a cross between the OK Corral and hell spawn attacks in a barren, dry Canada sometime after a Cataclysm destroyed our civilization and unleashed magic and evil galore.  She embeds her otherwise stock characters (think Luke Skywalker as the sherrif out to stop the evil gunman) with some feeling, making them a notch above cardboard.

I just don’t like the story or premise or characters and won’t read any more in what is now a series of six novellas.  Writing is decent,using flashbacks to show us the young boy and setting.

2 Stars

Spinning Time Preview by D. F. Jones  Teenagers, Lust, Jealousy, Didn’t Get to the Time Travel Part

I received a preview of Spinning Time via Instafreebies and won’t be buying the full novel.  It is billed as time travel but the preview showed a bunch of teenagers drinking and partying.  Rich Julia decides to date the local weirdo Phillip and her former boyfriend decides he is jealous and picks a fight.

The Amazon blurb for the full novel mentions Julia gets tossed 70 years into the future and must find a way back to Phillip.  Sorry, no.

1 Star

Winter Wren by Miranda Honfleur, Blade and Rose Short Story

Winter Wren is a short story designed to introduce us to Miranda Honfleur’s Blade and Rose series.  The story was pretty good although the ending and some of the character interactions were unappetizing.  I may buy the full novel, Blade and Rose, although it sounds a little melodramatic in the Amazon blurb:  “A kingdom in turmoil or the love of her life. Which one will she save?”

Edgehill (The Kingdom of Shadows Book 1) by Thomas Rouxville.

The cover on Edgehill is great.  The novel is really, really bad.  Our heroine Athena learns she is a Guardian of the Kingdom.  The kingdom is threatened by shadow that its king has invited in and all the men are called to the army.

Sadly, we never learn what a Guardian is.  Is Athena supposed to have magic?  Wisdom and diplomacy beyond her years?  What does a Guardian do?  74 Pages and we never ever get to this rather crucial point.

Of course the ladies left in town have no idea whatsoever how to act with their husbands gone; they are unable to run a farm or a mill or bakery or shop.  Not to worry, Athena will show them!  Not at all clear how ladies who stood beside their husbands for years would not have learned pretty much everything the man did, nor how an 18 year old girl will be able to teach anything.

I finished this only because I was sure we’d finally learn just what is going on with the Guardian business, but nope, no answers here.  Luckily it was a freebie.

1 Star

Locking Up Our Own – James Forman, Jr., Crime and Punishment in Black America

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Author James Forman, Jr., has written a fascinating book, Locking Up Our Own, describing the path we took to today’s situation where a very large number – 25% in some age cohorts – of black men are incarcerated.  He shows how many black leaders in the past pushed for strong justice, by supporting the war on drugs, for example, leading us step-by-step to the present.

We see drug use as a problem of crime, not as a health issue.  Forman asks how we might be better off if the first call were to a therapist/job program/rehab program rather than to the police.  This is an excellent question; yet Forman does not absolve the misbehaving individual of his own personal responsibility.  Forman’s point is that harsh prison sentences and lack of alternative punishments have a terrible effect on people, especially young people.  He asks whether alternative approaches might work better.

Forman makes some excellent points about racial disparate treatment, some chicken-and-egg problems.  Forman points out that poor and minority people are more likely to be hassled by police, which has been shown in several studies (although not more likely to be killed despite rhetoric to the contrary) and surely those communities behave differently towards police as a result, which causes the police to be tougher in response.

The author seemed surprised that black police were at least as hard as their white fellows when dealing with black suspects.  The officers are doing their duty, to their honor, and cannot turn a blind eye because of the suspect’s race.  Forman didn’t seem to think that they should take it easier on black people, but was nonetheless bemused that they are not.

The title itself – “Locking Up Own” – bothers me as it implies that there are “Us” and “Them” and that “we” should not be so tough on “Us”.  Forman comments that drug use rates are fairly constant among races and that the reason white folks don’t get arrested is because they can patronize safer venues to purchase.  It would be interesting to see whether that holds true if you look at poor neighborhoods in general.  For example, do poorer white folks and poorer black folks patronize the same dealers?  Are they both equally likely to get arrested or hassled by police?  In other words, is there something about a person’s race, or more likely, the person’s general attitudes, skills, background, experiences that make one more or less likely to offend and more or less likely to be arrested?

The book offers a few suggestions:

  • Decriminalizing some drug use.  Forman doesn’t advocate making drugs completely legal, but treating some violations as misdemeanors, especially related to marijuana.
  • Give addicts more than one or two chances to get clean and stay clean.
  • Offer mercy.  He ends the book on an eloquent story about a young mugger who had never been in trouble before.  Forman visited the victim and asked him to request mercy and for the young man to go to a job program.  The victim kindly agreed and the young mugger has stayed out of trouble.
  • Placing young offenders in job programs.
  • Thinking through the consequences, with an eye to racial imbalances.
  • Employers to not immediately fire someone on probationary status for an arrest.

One of the last sections covers some of the semi-deceptive pretexts that police use to search vehicles, such as claiming the windows are too dark, then using those searches to find a gun or small packets of marijuana.  The driver should not have had the drug in the first place, but the deception and trickery used is a problem.  The racial imbalance comes because the pretextual search program described in Washington D.C. deliberately excluded a city section that was low crime.  Unfortunately one could blame the the search program as racist when in fact it was designed to be efficient.

Forman did not mention any of the problems that growing up without a father are known to exacerbate, nor did he talk about how to change behaviors so fewer people use drugs, sell drugs, get into fights, join gangs, hang around on street corners.  He referenced an “all of the above” type of general solution, including jobs, welfare, health care, without looking at the problems that even these well-meaning solutions can bring.

Overall Locking Up Our Own is well-written and the author uses anecdotes from his public defender career and historical research to make his point.  It is not polemic or shrill, doesn’t deny the need for policing, doesn’t sugar coat the violence.  It is easy to read and thought provoking without being academic, in fact I read it on the beach on vacation.

4 Stars

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg – New Twist on Fantasy Magic

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I borrowed the first book in Charlie Holmberg’s Paper Magician YA fantasy series, The Paper Magician, from the library and found it surprisingly good.  About the only concession to YA is the book is short and a very fast read that could have been more developed.

After main character Ceomy used her scholarship to magic school to cram two years into one and graduate top of her class.  She expected to choose the element she would bond with – paper, metal, plastic, glass, rubber – but instead was assigned to paper, the least favored, unpopular substance.  Once she bonds with paper she can never reach her dream be a Smelter, bonded to metal.

The magic system is intriguing and I hope author Holmberg explores it more in future novels.  Basically paper magicians can do anything that paper can do.  For example, if one folds a basic fan then one can use that fan to create a massive windstorm. Or one can read anything written on paper and produce illusions that illustrate the story.

I got all sorts of ideas from this second notion, especially once Ceomy found that not everything she produced was an illusion; at least one was real and lasting.  Could one print a story about housework, read it and get the dishes done by magic?   Or build a house by reading about it?  Or win a war by writing about collapsing the enemy’s walls?

Ceomy herself was a far better character than I expected.  She makes the most of her opportunities, even when thrust into the least glamorous magic world.  She is resourceful, determined, smart, loyal.  When a dark magician attacks her mentor Thane, Ceomy risks everything to save him.  She learns as much paper magic as she can and, more important, learns how to think of new paper spells, new uses for paper.

The Paper Magician is set in a London around the early 1900s, with automobiles and carriages, trains but no planes.  Holmberg doesn’t elaborate the setting more than needed, creating a small problem that those unfamiliar with London may not be familiar with the locations she uses.

Ceomy’s magic school oversees her apprentice years; while she is assigned to a single magician she is still bound by the rules and Thane grades her on performance.  I found this part interesting and the school structure adds some ease to the plot; it gives Thane legitimate reasons to test Ceomy and stretch her skills.

Overall The Paper Magician is a most enjoyable book.  I would prefer a more complex novel that develops the magic system more intensely and a plot that has more layers.  The characters are well done and the dialogue and interactions feel real.

4 Stars

Marked – Book 9 in Alex Verus Series by Benedict Jacka – Magic in London

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Adventure writers can go two ways with their series:  They can either entangle their hero in a series of adventures, loosely linked but not necessarily sequential, or the hero can adventure while striving towards a goal.  Wizard series tend towards the second, where the hero perhaps gets himself in a mess in an early story, then works to resolve the knotty problem in books 2-N.  Think of Harry Dresden or Simon & Montague or Harry Potter or the Iron Druid.  Or Alex Verus in Benedict Jacka’s excellent series.

Marked, book 9 in Jacka’s series, starts with Alex seated (rather precariously) on the junior council of Light Mages in Britain.  In the first two books Alex is refreshingly honest, with simple goals:  Stay alive and keep his friends healthy and alive.  Sadly for him, Alex apprenticed to a Dark Mage before leaving in revulsion.  Also he is a very skilled diviner and lots of people want to use him.  Other people want to use him to get to the Dark Mage leadership – a place Alex vehemently rejects and fled for his life to avoid a few books ago in Burned.  Now he is trapped as the aide to the one Dark Mage with a seat on the Council.  His boss is in mage jail so Alex temporarily holds the seat.

Marked picks up with the same grim feeling we saw first in Burned, then Bound.  Alex has too many enemies and is too well known to simply slide off into obscurity.  He lost that choice a few books back when he tried to throw his lot in with the Light Mages.  Now Alex believes his only hope is to get so powerful that no one wants to go after him and he can choose what he does.  This opens the story up for many plot threads but we lost the charming young mage we met in the first few books.

Jacka brings a few new twists to the story.  Earlier Alex implied that young mages didn’t have a lot of choice.  They could apprentice with a Light or a Dark, they could attend the Light apprentice program, or they could remain adepts who are at everyone’s mercy.  This time Alex muses that the declared Light and Dark mages are a fraction of the total; he says the majority are neutral, independents.  It isn’t clear how one becomes (or stays) independent, and we’re left to wonder whether Alex could have lost the target on his back if he had not made waves, had been independent.  Apparently it is too late for that and Alex will move forward.

Characters

As you can see from the discussion about Alex’s choices, Jacka makes his characters into real people that we care about.  We identify with and root for Alex as he threads between morality and survival.  I’m not sure I’d have made the same choice he did, but I care that he did make it and want him to succeed.  (Of course, if your primary goal is survival then eventually you will lose.)

Alex is a thinker who is growing into a deadly doer; in fact he isn’t always thinking as well as he should.  He goes to ask the dragon under Arachne’s home some questions but doesn’t seem to absorb what he learns.  (Typical of dragon foretelling, the answers are cryptic to useless.)

Alex has matured considerably in the nine books.  He’s gained and lost friends, gained power, gained cynicism and gained too many enemies.  He always has good reason for what he does but it doesn’t always work and other people end up holding the bag – and holding a grudge against Alex.

Marked spends as much time on Anne as on Alex.  Anne is both the hero and the villain; Alex relies on her, saves her; she saves him.  Anne is enigmatic and it will be interesting to see how her character develops.

Anne wants to be a mage and live a normal life, to have a family, friends.  She got abducted and trained to kill as a teen and from that experience developed all sorts of deadly skills.  She shoved the immoral parts of her personality into a fortress, walled it off and threw away the key because she didn’t want to kill.  Alex encounters this non-Anne a few times and so far Anne is unwilling to integrate her two sides.  That may be book 10.

Back Story

The Light Mage council and its adherents are a typical bunch of academics/middle managers/PTA bosses.  They like to play games about dominance and face and will bicker and debate endlessly before taking action.  And when they do take action they aren’t too concerned about things like other people or truth or morality.  Yet Jacka made this believable – in fact it’s more believable than the benevolent, altruistic Council that some books about wizards and magic have.  People are people whether mages or not, and that’s how people act.

These mage leaders, both light and dark, seem motivated by power and greed for more power.  The revelation that the council is actually a minority of mages makes this more believable.  Most people do not dedicate their lives to power.  In Marked we see that is true for most mages too.

Even so, the endless threats that Alex faces seem a bit over the top.  He doesn’t seem to know how to gain a power base of people, aside from his friends, and is the obvious scapegoat for everything that goes wrong.  I hope he learns to expand his definition of “power” to include influence based on wisdom, credibility, helpfulness and not just raw magical power.

Overall

Jacka writes well and Marked has good dialogue, interesting, likable characters.  Marked has more action and a little less reflection than prior novels in the series, that combined with Alex’s declared intention to amass as much power as possible to ensure he and his friends survive makes the story a little less appealing than the prior novels.  I like Alex but I liked him a little more when he was the earnest want-to-do-good guy.  He still wants to do good and he still does good but he’s harder edged now, not as pleasant a chap.

My rating here would be 4+ or just under 5.  Marked is solid, excellent story and characters, but I don’t feel like it is quite a 5 star novel.

My thanks to the publishers who provided an advanced copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.