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

A Couple of So-So Novels – Devan Chronicles and Jyra

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The God Decrees: Devan Chronicles Book 1 by Mark E. Cooper is classical epic fantasy set in a quasi-medieval world.  Cooper writes well and tries a few twists on some standard fantasy elements.  Lord Keverin’s best friend and most capable wizard gives his life to bring a strong wizard from a distant world into Keverin’s castle to help defend and defeat invaders.  The twist is the champion turns out to be Julia, a dedicated gymnast practicing for the Olympic games.  Julia does not want to be in Keverin’s world and certainly does not want to defeat the oncoming army by killing them with magic.

Add to the mix the normal me-Tarzan you-Jane nonsense, feuding and treacherous neighbors, an archbishop who accuses Julia of witchcraft and heresy and you have the first novel, The God Decrees.  Somehow the mix just didn’t work for me and I abandoned the book about 3/4 through the first book in the 4-book series.  It felt trite and not compelling enough to read; I couldn’t care about the characters.

2 Stars

I read Jyra because author Blake B. Rivers sent a request to join his advanced readers group; the email was friendly and short so I moved Jyra up and read it the other evening.

Rivers noted Jyra is his first ever novel.  Unfortunately main character Jyra is dry and factual, who knowingly struggles with social clues, sarcasm, nuances in conversation and motives.  I’m not sure why he chose such a challenging heroine because the story itself is actually quite good and would have been enjoyable with a more interesting character.

Jyra’s story is about parallel or nested worlds all under attack from Something.  Jyra knows this Something is real because she has seen it.  I would like to see Rivers explore the seeming contradiction between the dry, factual Jyra and her readiness to believe in and act upon what almost anyone else would believe a dream.

Overall the story is decent.  Rivers has the germ of a good plot here and I hope he develops it, perhaps along with developing Jyra into a real person instead of a facsimile.

3 Stars

 

Hoopla – A New Library Service for Free E Books

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Last week Joe, Ransom library director, suggested I try Hoopla, the new E book service they offer.  Until now if I wanted to borrow an E book we had a limited selection even though Ransom is part of a regional consortium of smaller libraries.  Hoopla adds many, many more books to the reading pile!

Hoopla Benefits

Did I mention book selection?  Hoopla has tens of thousands of books in all genre, far more than our regional Overdrive selection.  I particularly enjoy fantasy and science fiction, which tend to skew towards series (Wheel of Time, Star Wars) which I don’t usually read.  Hoopla has these too (of course) but adds many less well-known novels and anthologies.

You can browse by category/genre or search for a specific author or title.  Books display with the cover and author and you can click each to read a short blurb.  The blurbs are descriptive, a few words about the plot and characters and also telling us what is unique about the book, why we will enjoy reading it.  So far the blurbs are helpful and I found several excellent books by authors I’ve never heard of before.

Michigan offers a state-wide library service where you can borrow books from any participating library (including most universities), but if you don’t know the title or author it is difficult to browse by genre, and once you do find a promising read the blurbs are minuscule.  I liked Hoopla’s combination of genre browse and blurbs very much.

Hoopla downloads books to your reader.  You can download with Overdrive too, but it’s cumbersome.  Having the file downloaded is great for taking your reader on vacation.

Text and format are clear.  I used to get new books via NetGalley to read on my Nook, but had to stop because the formats often were poor.  I’ve not had any problem with my current tablet using any of the readers – Hoopla, Nook, Kindle or Overdrive.

Books automatically return themselves once your due date arrives, so no need to worry about fines.  This is similar to Overdrive.  (When you download with Overdrive the book deletes itself but leaves a ghost copy that is a pain to remove.)

Books are free for us to borrow because the library pays a fee for each loan.  From what Joe told me the library’s cost will likely be less than the books purchased for Overdrive access.

Hoopla Not So Goods

Libraries are like real estate, selection, selection, selection.  Hoopla delivers the goods with selection, so realize these negatives are nuisance points.

We can borrow a set number per month, and even if you return books you cannot exceed that monthly limit.  Your library sets the limit – ours is 5 – and it makes sense due to the fees they must pay.  I hope that they eventually expand the selection and the limit.

I mentioned before that searching is a bit limited.  Fantasy genre offers a few sub genres, most of which seem odd to me: Collecdtions and Anthologies, Contemporary, Dark Fantasy, Epic, Historical, Humorous, Paranormal, Romantic and Urban.  You can further narrow by age and language.  Once you are looking at an individual title you can also search by tags, but the tags may be user-contributed because tags are case sensitive, with duplicates such as Time Travel and time travel.

Hoopla is fairly intuitive although I did have to look up how to navigate back to the menu from within a title.  The Hoopla help is lousy but there are many web pages posted by other libraries that are helpful.

My only serious complaint was an inability to keep my place in a book, mostly when I had to turn off my reader to go to bed.  It opened back to the same novel but nowhere near the same place in the story.  I’m not sure whether this was specific to my tablet or innate to the application.

Installing and Using

It’s easier for me to browse with my laptop with its nice big keyboard than to use my tablet.  In fact I set up my account with my laptop, then used Chrome browser on the tablet to downloaded Hoopla, and now I browse the selection and pick out books from the laptop screen.

Ransom has cards with instructions and it’s easy to install.  You access the title and read directly from the Hoopla icon on the tablet.

Besides books Hoopla offers comics, audio books, music and movies.  The lending limit is across all media.

Summary

If your library offers Hoopla I recommend you try it out.  It’s an easy way for your library to expand its digital offering and it’s easy to find and read good books.  That’s the bottom line, selection, selection, selection!

Wreckers Gate – Classic Epic Fantasy From a New Author

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Wreckers Gate intrigued me with its cover and blurb.  General Wulf Rome is too successful, too charismatic, too uncouth for his king and the nobles.  The king sends him on a should-be suicide mission that ended up with Rome and his friend Quyloc finding a strange ax in the desert that enables Rome to usurp the throne.  The ax somehow links to the imprisoned god Melekath and when Rome takes the ax it allows Melekath’s primary servants to escape and prepare for Melekath’s eventual full release.

Wreckers Gate reminded me of David Eddings’ multi-volume works.  Way back in the distant past goddess Xochitl imprisoned Melekath. Xochitl’s primary servant Lowellin comes to Rome and Quyloc to warn them of the upcoming apocalyptic battle, and tells Quyloc to visit the frightening other world Pente Akka for a weapon that will battle Melekath.  Lowellin also visits the Tenders, the now-disgraced sisterhood who served goddess Xochitl until they allowed themselves to be corrupted.

Writing Style

The plot is similar to Eddings’ and other authors’, with the humans fighting for one god against another and with deep-seated evil rolling over the lands.  I am not an Eddings fan but his best books grab my interest and I care about the characters.  I was able to stay aloof from the characters and events in Wreckers Gate; it was interesting and I was moderately curious, but ultimately it remained only story, it did not feel personal.

Wreckers Gate is author Eric T. Knight’s first novel and it is pretty good considering.  He creates an interesting back story that may come out more in the sequels.  We can feel the underlying tension between the nobility and their new ruler Rome, among the Tenders, between Quyloc and Lowellin.  There are hints that there is more to the Xochitl-Melkath story that will come out in sequels.

Knight is at his best describing the settings.  The city had smells and noise; the desert had wind and scorching heat and bitter cold; the Tenders’ home was shabby and poor.

The overall writing quality was good.  The story was clear even when switching among viewpoints and Knight sketches in the back story without spending undue time rehashing the forgotten past.  Pacing was pretty good although I thought it bogged down a bit when we were with the Tenders.

First in a Series

Wreckers Gate is the first in a series of five books.  With long series like this we always have the problem of losing continuity, forgetting what happened in earlier books, or the writer himself may take some odd shortcuts. All five books are out now available on Amazon as a boxed set here.

Also the story is pretty easy to follow because it has one main theme:  Melkath is escaping.  We need to remember who is on whose side, but there are not that many individual characters who play large roles so it’s easy to keep track.  I put the novel down several times to read other books that were more compelling and never had a problem picking back up or remembering who is who.

If you like epic fantasy and don’t mind long book series you will likely enjoy Wreckers Gate.  It’s well-written with reasonably interesting back story, plot and characters.

That said, I’m not sure I want to read 5 books in this series (I don’t much like epic fantasy series).  I will read the second book and see whether it’s compelling enough to continue.

3 Stars

Review: Under New Leadership – Intriguing Novella about an IRS Agent (Really)

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Writing coaches and English teachers all say to write what you know about.  New author Shawn Robert Smith is an accountant so he wrote about…yes, an IRS agent on jury duty.  If this sounds weird for a science fiction plot, then know his short story, Under New Leadership, works.

Smith built an intriguing back story that makes me want to learn more.  Why are there 10 new alien species all in the United States?  How come one (or more) are IRS agents?  How does that work?  I’m trying to visualize people from really far away and really strange backgrounds learning double entry bookkeeping, auditing, and taxation and coming up a bit short.

I took accounting classes years ago (so as to pass the CPA exam just in case I needed a career change) and can say that one must put a different hat on in order to think in accountant-ese.  Accountants measure stuff and record stuff and the biggest conflicts are on how to do it, not whether the thing being measured is worth doing in the first place.  Now we’ve aliens who fled to Earth and the US’s welcome worrying whether to double discount depreciation?  This is one new back story and it’s lots of fun.

Main character Jrulnik is blessed with super hearing and discovers a plot by criminal masterminds to pool their efforts for greater profit and less bloodshed.  He shows up for jury duty but gets bundled into a closet while the supposed jurors agree on new leadership for their cabal before freeing Jrulnik and blithely finding the defendant guilty.  All the way through Jrulnik wants to be a good citizen, worries about maintaining the honor of the IRS by performing his juror role with care.

We have lots of mysteries.  Who is the girl with purple eyes really?  Where did she come from?  How did we get 10 alien species all fleeing to Earth?  What are they fleeing from and did anyone nefarious follow them?  And last, how did the IRS survive and thrive in a world with aliens?  (Or is that another way of saying that death and taxes will be with us always?)

Such a simple plot.  And so much back story!  I look forward to reading the novels Smith will write set in this same world. Right now this story is free on Amazon and I recommend it.

4+ Stars

Mini Reviews: Paradigm, 1799 Planetfall, Lake of Sins Escape

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These three books from Instafreebie are by new authors who want to establish themselves by gaining an audience.  I respect and commend their dedication to writing and to the very difficult process of writing fantasy/science fiction for adults.

Paradigm, Three Shots of Science Fiction by Killian C Carter

Paradigm is a set of three stories; Exhibit X and Half and Half are short stories and Into Infinity is longer, more a novella. Author Carter writes reasonably well, with a good sense of pacing and delivers decent characterization and setting in these short pieces.  Exhibit X and Half and Half both suffer from endings that are predictable when they are meant to be surprise twists.

Exhibit X takes a class on a field trip to the Smithsonian sometime after an apocolypse that killed most animals and people. The story does a good job with the teacher, Mrs. Zilmore, whom we all can identify with.  She’s a stereotype but a nice one.

Half and Half takes to to a different dystopian future where people are now cyborgs.  It’s not clear why the cyborgs want to eradicate the normal humans.  This story is the weakest of the three.

Carter builds an interesting world in the novella Into Infinity.  It’s an alien world with a mysterious lake, threatening wildlife and an annoying journalist.  It’s my favorite of the three, quite well done.

Overall the collection is 3 stars.

1799 Planetfall by Chogan Swan

1799 Planetfall asks what would happen if an alien were marooned on earth back in 1799, on a mission to stop invading creatures from acting like locusts.  The premise is great.  The writing is mediocre and the plot has plenty of smut.  I didn’t finish.

1 star

Lake of Sins – Escape by L. S. O’Dea

I’m not sure what to say about Escape.  It’s the first novel in a series, dystopian with some funny moments, many twisted moments and some disgusting moments.  I believe author O’Dea intends us to ask “what makes someone a people?”. According to the blurb the world is populated by normal humans and human/animal hybrids, although it’s not clear in the novel that the different groups are animal hybrids.  The only wildlife are small, rabbits and squirrels.

Lead character Trinity is the child of a Producer/House Servant union, a forbidden union.  Producers are normally huge, males 8 feet or more tall and almost as wide, docile; they farm and produce the food.   House Servants are smaller and have fangs and retractable claws.  Poor Trinity is supposed to all Producer and is small with fangs and claws she tries to hide.

This first novel mostly builds the world where the Almightys (normal humans) control Producers and House Servants and Guards, with everyone knowing their place.  Trinity is desperate to discover what happens to the Producers who are Listed, removed from their compound.  Do they go elsewhere to farm or do other tasks?  It isn’t a huge surprise when we learn that Listed Producers get fattened up and slaughtered for food.

The novel sets up a conflict to come when Trinity meets and becomes friendly with Almightys Kim and Jethro.  Kim is old enough to know what happens to Producers, and while she apparently doesn’t approve she also isn’t doing anything about it.  Jethro is too young and hasn’t yet been told.

Escape grabs one’s attention but the overall premise is so dark and unpleasant that I’m none t sure I want to read the sequels.  On the one hand we have people who cook and work and call their parents Mom and Dad but who are raised for food, on the other we have humans who bake cookies and work and also call their parents Mom and Dad and who eat the food.

How do you talk to someone, work with someone one day and eat them the next?  At some point anyone would have to ask “Why?  What makes this group People and that group livestock?” but apparently no one has.  Yet.

The novel flows easily and has good pacing.  Trinity is the main character but is actually not that well developed  The most interesting person was Lead Producer Troy who is assigned Tina as his mate but is actually gay and will do anything to keep his lover Remy safe.  Troy schemes to frame the people he most dislikes and to keep Remy from being retired along with Millie, Trinity’s mother and Remy’s assigned mate.

3+ Stars

General’s Legacy: Part Two, The Whiteland King Outstanding Fantasy from Indie Author Adrian Hilder

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It’s always delightful to find a new author to love, books to buy then snuggle up to read.  It doesn’t happen often enough.

Recently Adrian Hilder’s fantasy novel Inheritance, part 1 of The General’s Legacy made its way into my Kindle book pile.  I got it along with a hundred others via Instafreebie, most listed with only the cover so every pick was a guess and golly.

Authors’ newsletters clued me for which novels to read first.  All the shape shifter and vampire, YA romance went to the back of the pile, along with any promoted by newsletters that were incoherent, full of swear words or boring.  Hilder’s newsletter caught my eye because he sounded down to earth, authentic, humble yet confident that his work of love, Inheritance, is worth reading.

I agree. Inheritance is outstanding, especially for a newbie author.  Book 2, The Whiteland King, nearly matches it for quality and compelling reading.

Plot

The Whiteland King picks up immediately after Inheritance, with Valendo’s forces divided in two.  The larger group stays to defend the country from the undead army and ends up besieged in Dendra castle.  Prince Cory leads a tiny group into Nearhon to end the war.

The story moves fast. The plot is exciting enough to keep our interest and we aren’t sure how Cory will triumph or who will survive, or who will end the problem how with Nearhon’s lead mage, Magnar.

Whiteland King missed a couple opportunities to make more of the Dendra defenders under siege.  For example, the men fear the undead necromancer will re-animate any creature that dies, yet one horse dies and is not re-animated.  Despite the defenders being curious nothing happens about the horse.  I thought the author could have developed that into a little vignette, either explaining that the horse’s rider somehow left it immune to the necromancer, or that it indicated the sorcerer was absent.

The defenders’ situation was grim after a week or so, with their food stores destroyed, no feed for the horses, unable to sortie, unable to receive reinforcements or materiel from the outside.  The Cory narrative continues for about 10 days after this, so presumably the defenders had no relief.  I wondered a few times how they were doing, how they continued to survive the necromantic attacks.

Writing Style

The author develops three main points of view, the besieged defenders, Prince Cory’s band, and the Nearhon group of King Klonag, Magnar, Julia, Commander Brocksheer, easy to follow with smooth transitions.  We never wonder where we are as Hilder breaks the point of view changes into chapters and orients each one, e.g., “Resting his face against Sunny’s warm neck Cory…” followed next chapter by “King Sebastian watched…”

I admire Hilder’s ability to add small details into the main narrative flow.  He doesn’t sidetrack us with abrupt segues to tell us about the scenery or expand the minor characters; instead uses a phrase or two to show us.  This keeps the novel flowing.

For example, minor character Toldroy acts as a guide for about 3 pages.  We learn more about Toldroy when we find that “he kept some of the steps in the staircase loose so they creaked ensuring no visitor could arrive unannounced.”  That tells us about Toldroy:  He is more than he pretends, and he has good reason to be afraid, and we can feel the dark staircase and hear the creaks.

Whiteland King is the second book in The General’s Legacy and it combines with Inheritance to tell a complete story.  The two together have a beginning, middle and end.  The Afterword mentions a third book but I expect it is set later and has different challenges.

Characters

Julie shines in Whiteland King.  She shows courage, resourcefulness, dedication, honor, honesty, family devotion. Julia introduces us to a new character, Lyam Brocksheer, equally honorable and dedicated.  Neither is perfect so you know they could be real people.  Julie is impetuous; Lyam is willing to deceive his king when Klonag expects repugnant action.

We get a glimpse of Cory as a child and see a little why the General chose him and we see him grow as he faces what must be done.  Cory’s brother, King Sebastian, also sees what he must do, takes a deep breath and does it.

One of my favorite characters is Zeivite, Arch Mage of Valendo.  Through him we meet his daughter Petra who plays a major role in the plot but doesn’t take up a lot of room on the stage.  I expect we’ll see more of Petra in subsequent novels.

Just as with Inheritance the novel starts with a vignette that is incidental to the plot.  We meet Flynn, merchant and orphanage master, whom I hope to see again.  Flynn is interesting!

Petra’s reminiscences in the early vignette hint at another mage, a mysterious bald man who is an instructor at Petra’s school.  He’s another one that is likely to show up in later books.

It was refreshing that neither Inheritance nor Whiteland King used swearing or blasphemy and most of the older characters are married and happy about it.  I’m always glad to find a book with decent moral attitudes, sadly harder to find now.  Hilder is matter of fact about God and heaven and hell; he doesn’t preach, it’s just assumed that of course God exists.  I liked that.

Setting

Inheritance moved slower in the beginning, with people going about their daily life, romance and courtship, government, family worries.  Hilder spent a little of the slow period lovingly showing us Valendo; we got to know its green hills and waterfalls, the towns and castles.

Hilder took a different approach with Whiteland King.  He bundles the setting description into the narrative.  It doesn’t work quite as well as a method to show us the landscape, but it also allows setting to get out of the way and let plot and character run the show.  Part of Cory’s mission trudges through a high plateau in a winter blizzard.  Hilder could have bored us to tears with the snow, or spent a paragraph or so to help us feel the cold.  What he actually did was to skip right by the winter scene; we read once that Cory was miserably cold and uncomfortable huddling in a yurt.  That felt rushed.

Setting helps us feel and experience alongside the characters.  Too much description and we’re bored and too little and the story loses some of its emotional impact.

Emotion

Whiteland King has a tiny bit less emotional punch than Inheritance.  We feel tension, worry, love, concern, fear, all tempered by the fact that the Valendo people have no choice.  They either move forward or they die.  The do-or-die nature actually calms the heart, allowing the characters to still feel – and us along with them – but also to shove their feelings to the back and get on with the task.

Summary

I rated Inheritance a solid 5 stars, and would give Whiteland King the same.  I thought Whiteland King was just a hair less polished than Inheritance, as it felt a bit rushed and I would have liked to see more of the Dendra Castle group, but overall it is excellent, well written, with solid plot and people.  The setting and emotion were less solid or intense, still very very good.

Sometimes new authors put their heart into their first novel and don’t have much left for the second.  Hilder delivers outstanding fantasy in both novels in the series and I look forward to reading the third one when it comes out.

5 Stars

More Instafreebie Mini Reviews: Zero Flux and Soldier of Charity

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Recently I got several dozen science fiction and fantasy novels for free from Instafreebie.  Getting the books meant getting their authors’ newsletters too.  I unsubscribed immediately from newsletters that were all fluff, or talked about angels, demons, shape shifters, mermaids, steampunk, vampires, werewolves, alpha mates, alien romances or featured bare chested men or barely dressed women, were aimed at YA audiences or were incoherent; no point in wasting the writers’ email quotas or my time.  I’ve been going through the rest and reading the books which have interesting titles or covers (yes, it is hard to judge a book by its cover), or the author sounds like someone who has a story to tell.

So far I’ve found some real winners, the Excalibur Rising series and the General’s Legacy series are excellent.  A few have been so bad I deleted them immediately and most have been so-so.  This post reviews two in the so-so bunch.

Zero Flux by Carol Van Natta has a super cover.  What’s not to like with a flyer in a cave and the subtitle about the Central Galactic Concordance?  The novella builds on the cover with an interesting premise and setting but fails to deliver any sense of danger or tension.  Things just happen.

Luka Foxe’s old mentor Einer asks Luka and Mairwen to help him investigate two people found murdered in an ice cave on Luka’s very cold home planet.  Luka, Mairwen and Einer nearly die when the ice cave partially collapses and survive by taking refuge in an abandoned lab facility.  Unfortunately the facility alarm alerts the murderer who shows up and starts hunting all three.

This sounds exciting but it’s not.  Events happen with no sense of dread or tension from the danger, even when Luka realizes Einer has hidden much.  Author Van Natta tells us that Luka fears for Mairwen’s safety and his own, but we don’t feel it.  It’s flat.

The characters don’t have personalities.  Luka and Mairwen have unusual powers that don’t add much to the story.  The setting, an ice cave, should have felt cold.  It didn’t.  I couldn’t visualize much nor was it interesting.

Cold Flux is a novella in a larger series that has quite a few higher ratings on Amazon.  I finished the novella so am rating it 2 stars.  I kept reading expecting it to get better, it just never did.  There were hints of an interesting backstory and the writing wasn’t bad.

Soldier of Charity by Luke R. Mitchell is a prequel to his post apocalyptic Harvesters series.  Mitchell writes well and his main character Jarek is sympathetic, about 18 years old, idealistic and owns a protective high-tech exo suit with its own AI.

I mostly liked Soldier of Charity and wanted to like it more, but the novel was limited by its protagonist’s youth and lack of wisdom.  Several times I wanted to shake some sense into that kid.  For example, he joins a paramilitary group that protects outlying farms in exchange for some of their produce.  Now this is either the beginnings of feudalism or a classic shake down racket, but Jarek falls for the idea and joins the group enthusiastically.

Pryce, one of the men who recruits Jarek, is ambiguous.  He tells Jarek that the boss will never ask him to do something he doesn’t believe in, yet slowly leads Jarek into all sorts of grey areas.   Jarek starts to question these but continues to believe Pryce.  The ending with Pryce is a bit unbelievable as I doubt the character would have acted as he did.

Overall the novel is well done with solid writing, an intriguing idea and fairly well-done characters.  Ultimately my rating of 3 stars reflects that it is YA fiction and I didn’t enjoy it enough to check out the next books from this author.  Older teens would like this.

General’s Legacy: Part One: Inheritance. Outstanding Fantasy with Complete Characters, Plot, Setting, Emotion and Style

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The  General’s Legacy: Part One: Inheritance by new author Adrian Hilder is just the ticket for those of us who love well-written fantasy with real people, rich settings, solid plot.  I’ve lost my tolerance for books that hit on one or two of the five cylinders – plot, people, setting, style, emotion – but miss the rest.  Inheritance is a wonderful surprise, full of rich characters, vivid descriptions, fast-moving plot, good dialogue and a balance of suspense, magic, romance, determination, fear, loathing.

Setting

Have you noticed many new books completely skip the setting?  Reading them vs. reading Hilder’s Inheritance is like watching today’s miserable kids’ cartoons vs. the richly detailed Disney or Bugs Bunny cartoons from the 1940s-60s.  Hilder makes us feel the rich spring air, the steep mountain paths and old castle towers by spending just the right amount of time staging the scene.  We can easily feel our legs turn to mush along with Cory when he runs up and down the 5 towers, can feel the heat from the fire and smell the nasty odors from the tanneries polluting the lake.

Recently I read yet another Modesitt story that had way too much detail, too many words describing soggy breakfasts or dusty roads.  In Modesitt’s novels I read the words but don’t feel them, don’t smell the horses or feel the rain.  In comparison Hilder hits just the right balance.  Too much time on setting and we forget the story, too little and it’s gray instead of color.

Plot

Hilder starts the book off 15 years ago at the General’s climatic battle to save the country of Valendro from bloodthirsty neighbor Nearhon and starts every chapter with a synopsis of battles that the General won over his long career.  Now the General is dead and grandson Cory must pick up and go on.

The plot is complex with plenty of action, some romance and leavened by orchestra concerts and Council meetings.  Again Hilder balances the need for action with the fact that action is most vivid when it contrasts with the daily routine.  We are alongside Cory and his brothers as they work with their father, the King, to govern Valendro during peacetime when the biggest conflict is which city should get the road upgrade first.  We are still with Cory when he confronts the deadliest enemy.

There are a couple small plot questions that related to the magic, such as why the Nearhon wizard Magnar didn’t strike sooner, but nothing bothersome.  I don’t look for detailed discussions of the magic systems in fantasy novels, suffice it that the magic exists, that it has some limitations and costs, that it can be reasonably consistent.  Hilder delivers this.

Character

Most of the main characters are multi-dimensional, well-developed.  I found the ladies sufficient but not quite as interesting as the men.  For example, Julia’s father has not been able to win arguments with her, but we don’t see her as quite that strong of a person.  Don’t get me wrong, Julia is well developed, just not quite as thoroughly.  We get hints that there is far more to Julia than a pretty face, music and horses.  I’m hoping book 2 shows more of her character.

The enemy wizard Magnar doesn’t appear in the novel many times, but when we does we notice and we remember!  He’s not a cardboard villain, but a person obsessed with magic and exploring its depth and breadth all while walking a tight rope with the king of Nearhon.

Style

Hilder does a bang up job telling the story through side vignettes and dialogue.  Some dialogue is internal, as when Sebastian wrestles with his frustration at not knowing much about diplomacy or Cory struggles to not be overwhelmed with his responsibility.

The pacing is also solid.  We go fast, then slow down a bit, then speed up zoom zoom!  A few places I had to go back to re-read to make sure I inferred correctly what happened because Hilder tended to skid right through some major plot events.

Emotion

I like books that make you feel.  Authors do this in part by creating characters that feel like real people, like friends you want to meet, and partly by the dialogue and plot.  The vivid setting and scene staging help too.  This was the most emotional book I read since Naomi Novik’s Uprooted (see review here), and like Uprooted, Inheritance has the horrible sense that failure meant that everything failed, a dash of romance, determination, and the characters’ fierce joy in accomplishing what they must.

Overall

I enjoyed Inheritance and look forward to reading the second book, The Whiteland King.  I rarely give 5 stars but will do so with Inheritance.  Solid writing, first rate characterization, fun plot, vivid setting rate a 5 from me!

The Last Star – Finale to Compelling 5th Wave Series

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Sometimes You Don’t Need to Know the Answers to Know What to Do

First the bad news.  Author Yancey never answers the questions of what the aliens were doing, why they invaded Earth, why they killed off so many, why they were so consistently cruel.  For the good news, most of our main characters survive and the tiny remnants of civilization remain.

Characters

Yancey developed his main characters, Cassey, Ringer, Ben, Evan and Sam, in the first two books and does very little to further them in The Last Star.  We do see Ringer developing tentative alliance with Cassey, and all the older characters keep trying to figure out what is going on, the alien’s plan and purpose.

The three main human characters, Cassie, Ben and Ringer, are confused and torn, angry and frustrated.  This feels real.  I don’t understand Ringer’s attitude towards Cassie, a little contemptuous until the end, but it fits her overall sense of superiority.  Ben is realistic, never quite sure of himself, never quite hopeful, never ready to give up, looking for people to love.

Evan is the saddest character, neither fully alien nor fully human.  Sam is stubborn.

Writing Style

The 5th Wave flows very well.  We have a start and an end and events and characters move one into the other.  The Infinite Sea takes a very different approach with mostly new characters and tone.  The Last Star is jerkier with pacing issues and diversions that don’t add much.

Yancey uses multiple points of view in The Last Star which gives more background and depth but also makes it less even.  The first POV character is the priest Silencer whom we re-encounter later as a 3rd party.  A few of the POV switches are disjointed.

The mood changes over the course of the series.  The 5th Wave characters are sad, frightened.  Cassie was terrified of being the last human and horrified that she had killed the crucifix soldier but we ended hopeful because Cassie and Evan ally and plan.   The Infinite Sea is darker as we see depths of cruelty and misery, but the characters are determined and will fight back.   The Infinite Sea has a sense of hopelessness in the beginning that changes; in the end we once more see hope albeit with sadness, loss and worry.

Plot Problems (Spoilers)

The ending is a bit too tidy.  In part it satisfies because we see hope for the future, a seed of family, community, learning.

Evan tells Ben there are more military bases than just the one in Ohio, and they also had been training kids to kill.  Evan takes his personal mission to clean up all these bases, killing thousands of indoctrinated kid soldiers.  The novel stops with Evan walking into the sunset, off to kill people while Ringer and Ben create a family and teach trust the hard way.

(Spoiler) The bomb requires one to breath in order to activate, which means the mother ship must have air.  Hmm.  If aliens are incorporeal why is there air?

(Spoiler)  Aliens embedded the program/personality/augmentation into Evan when he was in his mother’s womb, then activated it when he hit puberty.  At least some of the other Silencers and military leaders are adult humans.  Were they embedded as adults?  Or were their alien personalities (real or artificial) formed earlier?  If earlier then where was the mother ship all this time?

(Spoiler)  The Silencers expect to be evacuated before the aliens bomb every city and town on Earth.  Vosch tells Ringer that there are only 12 of the evacuation pods and none of the Silencers are going to the mother ship.  (Vosch lies all the time so we cannot know whether this is true.  It is true that he has a pod.)  So what are the Silencers going to do?  If they die in the bombardment then the 5th wave is done; if they lived then they too are betrayed.  Evan believes the Silencers would move to destroy the remaining bases but I don’t see the connection.  If I were a Silencer and my ticket home got torn up I’d fade into the background and be human.

(Spoiler)  Vosch has Evan’s character mind wiped, then reloads only the alien part with the result that alien Evan is solely a killer, no shred of personality or anything else.  Does that tell us the aliens are just killers?  Nothing else?  From a plot perspective, how did Ringer and Ben figure out which of the 10,000 plus personalities to reload?

There are other too-neat or unrealistic plot issues, but mostly they don’t get in the way of a solid book.

What Were the Aliens Doing?

Option 1.  Destroy Trust to Destroy Civilization

Ringer ends up believing the aliens are trying to reduce human populations and permanently twisting us to never trust, never again come together as community, never again build civilization, never again take over the earth and destroy other living creatures. Vosch hints at this with her although he never came out and agreed.  Destroying trust to destroy humanity while leaving a few humans alive is certainly one possibility, but it doesn’t make sense.

True, the aliens used unbearably cruel methods to kill the survivors of the first four waves.  They are betrayal itself, first of all the people who died, then of their children/soldiers and weaponized toddlers; even their Silencers are to be betrayed by abandonment and bombardment.

But consider this.  If you do not yourself witness small groups dying because they brought a booby-trapped child inside their home, would you still learn the lesson to trust no one?  I suppose if everyone who does trust dies, then the remaining survivors may have less innate tendency to trust and form communities (assuming there is some genetic factor behind trust).  But overall I don’t see this working.

I don’t believe the no-trust rule would settle permanently into our collective hearts.  People are hardwired to form families, to reach for something more than themselves, to build communities.  We need trust to have children, trust to form families.  Small families turn into larger family groups, then tribes, then hello civilization.  We could end up with Stone Age family group sizes but I don’t see how this could end up permanent.  The aliens would have to re-teach the lesson every few hundred years.

Last, for a group that supposedly venerates life they sure kill a lot of people.

Option 2.  Keep a Small Number of People for Hosts, aka Kill the Humans and Take Over

Evan believes that he is an alien personality downloaded into a human host.  He discusses the aliens’ origin and names with Vosh and is convinced that his purpose was to kill enough humans for the aliens to take over Earth.

This option makes more sense to me than number 1, although it begs the question how the aliens would operate without bodies and why they needed a planet if they were pure thought.

Option 3.  Aliens are Killers First Last and Always

Vosh strips out the human Evan leaving only alien Evan.  That stripped Evan is a killer, nothing else, no goal other than to kill everyone he can.  If this is typical alien mind, then the aliens are here to kill.  Perhaps they are just plain evil.

Option 4.  Something Else

It’s possible the entire story is a lie, that the aliens do in fact have bodies and are in fact trying to kill off everyone so they can take over the planet free of annoying humans.  Or something else, pick your favorite.

Ultimately

In the end it doesn’t matter why the aliens did what they did.  We don’t know and that’s probably Yancey’s purpose here.  The characters wouldn’t know.

If the purpose were to destroy trust – permanently – then Ringers and Ben’s determination to live with trust, to form community, to regain civilization would be the answer.  And if the purpose were to take over Earth, then Ringer and Ben’s nascent community and others with like minds would be bulwark against that takeover.

We don’t need to know the answer to enjoy the novel and the series, and the guessing adds to the sense of sorrow and terror that Cassie and Ringer and Ben and Sam and Evan would feel.

Overall

I can’t give The Last Star 5 stars, mostly because it doesn’t flow as well as it should and because the characters don’t change much.  It is otherwise enjoyable and thought-provoking.

4 Stars

Obsidian Son – Great Sounding Fantasy, But What A Bust

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I don’t usually review books I don’t finish.  Since I read 5 to 10 books a week and review only a couple, I put most effort into books I like or ARCs.  I’m making an exception for Obsidian Son, the first novel in a four-part series by Shane Silvers.  Obsidian Son sounds so good and has great reviews on Amazon, a fun premise, neat cover.  It’s all there, everything except the book itself.

The story starts off with our hero, Nate Temple, wizard, bookstore owner, super rich young fellow and recent orphan, sneaking up on the Minotaur to engage in a bit of cow tipping.  He gets smeared with cow dung, arrested, interrogated by the police, released.  When he gets home to have a drink with his two best friends he simply tosses his coat into the laundry basket and makes drinks – without washing up.  Sorry, that was hard to take.

The main character is a sophomoric jerk with an overabundance of ego and a nasty attitude about women.  (Quote:   “To women and careers and the men who ride them.”)  Yet this same character hasn’t asked his office manager for a date because he might get turned down.  Yeesh.

Author Silver has way too heavy a hand with foreshadowing.  Even without getting past the first quarter of the novel I could tell that Temple’s mysterious client is himself a dragon (he smelled like rocks and snakes), that Temple’s friend Peter was somehow corrupted by someone magic (since he had on a new bracelet and suddenly had magic abilities), that Temple will discover his parents’ company used magic as much as technology.  So on.  Really, how much more obvious can someone be, yet Temple, who is supposed to be super smart never notices and never even asks his buddy Peter where he got magic?

The author clearly has little to no understanding how people who have money actually use it, or what the consequences might be of flinging Aston Martin cars around to one’s friends.  The main character thinks nothing of driving through red lights, speeding down urban streets and doing donuts to stop his flashy new car in front of his friend.  Does anyone really think that having a fancy car means he doesn’t have to share the road?  This is when I decided to pull the plug and delete Obsidian Son from my reader.

The last point is the blasphemous use of the name Jesus.  This is the name of God’s only begotten Son, not some casual throw-away interjection.  The author tossed a couple of these in the mix too.

Overall, 1 star.  Did not finish and do not recommend.