More Books than Time

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

Bright Ruin by Vic James – Harrowing Finale to Dark Gifts Trilogy

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Bright Ruin picks up immediately after Tarnished City (which follows right after Gilded Cage, the first book in the Dark Gifts trilogy by Vic James); be sure to read the books together so you don’t lose track of the characters and setting.  Bright Ruin is the climax and offers an ending that is meant to offer a path forward to an England that appears to have no future beyond more oppression and cruelty.

The Skilled Jardine family, including daughter-in-law Bouda, have immense talents that they use to achieve and hold power.  Bouda is the only one who genuinely cares about the country – and she believes the Skilled are better and should rule and that Slave Days are the obvious and natural outcome.

Their counterpoint family is the Hadleys, mostly oldest Abi and goodhearted Luke.  Vic James develops the characters to some extent but what we see in Gilded Cage we see in Bright Ruin, except that Gavar finds a conscience and Abi determination.  Bright Ruin includes all the people from prior books, telling the story through Abi, Luke, Gavar, Bouda and Silyen.

 

** SPOILER ALERT**

England faces the basic problem of “what next”?  Do the Equals continue enslaving common people?  Do they lighten up a bit and make the slavery less cruel?  Do they abolish slavery?  The economy and social structure are built around 10 years of slavery for all commoners.  You cannot simply end that without some plans for the future.  Bouda carries much of the story line, where she continues to insist that Equals should rule and commoners slave, all while she wonders whether that is completely true.  Gavar makes his choice because he loves his daughter.  Silyen doesn’t really care; he doesn’t like slavery and cruelty but he’s not going to fight to eliminate it.

James had a challenge to wrap this up.  She brings in new magic and a mythical figure and an enormous sacrifice from Silyen, whom we would never expect to sacrifice anything (or perhaps he takes this action to follow the wonder king).  The result is not completely believable nor completely satisfying.

Overall I didn’t care for Bright Ruin as much as the first novel; I dislike series where the author writes themselves into a corner and then must have a miracle occur to conclude and that is what Bright Ruin feels like.

3 Stars

I received a free copy from the publisher via NetGalley in expectation of a review.

Tarnished City by Vic James, Sequel to The Gilded Cage – Dystopian Magic in England

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Vic James’ taunt fantasy thriller, The Gilded Cage, introduced us to a horrifying alternate England, one where magic-wielding Skilled Equals tyrannize everyone else, even requiring all commoners to serve 10 years of Slave Days.  The slavery conditions vary, from miserable to deadly, and Equals have little or no consequences for injuring their slaves.  Once a commoner serves their 10 years as a slave they are more-or-less free, with however, no political power.  (Gilded Cage review is here.)

Tarnished City picks up immediately after The Gilded Cage.  Luke is Condemned, in the hands of Crovan, a psychopath Equal, highly skilled at inflicting torture via the mind.  Luke’s sister Abigail has escaped from the car that is bringing her and her parents to the slave town, and now makes her way to an Equal family she believes can help her prove Luke’s innocence and set him free.

Neither sibling realizes exactly how naive they are.  Only a few Equals care about commoners or are willing to take action even knowing someone is innocent of a crime.  As power-hungry Whittam Jardine says, “Stupid girl.  Truth isn’t what happened, it’s what people will believe happened.”

Tarnished City‘s plot is escapes, followed by searches for family, followed by desperate quests for fairness and justice, with a good-size helping of violence.  The story combines Luke and Abigail coming of age, realizing exactly what their country is and what they can – and cannot – do to save it.  Their counterpoint is the Jardine sons.  One grows into betrayal, one into on-again/off-again decency, and one is a sociopath, caring almost nothing about anything beyond his Skill.  One family is Slave and the other Equal and they are bound together.

Characters have a range of emotions and motives although a few of them remain opaque.  The villains are notably sketchy (after all, what author wants to delve into the mind of a psychopath like Crovan?)  Even Abi and Luke feel more like people in a book rather than real people.  Despite the somewhat-limited character building we can empathize enough to realize the incredible danger and no-win situations for the individuals and the overall country.

Overall Tarnished City is well-done.  It is difficult to read in large doses given the truly terrible and horrifying events and situations that Vic James develops.  On the downside there are a lot of characters and some are in-and-out, no one you have to remember.  The author tries to help us keep the point of view narrator clear by noting the person in the chapter titles, but it is still a little hard to recall a minor character from the first novel.

I just received an advance copy of the final novel, Bright Ruin, and am curious how James will end this.  There is no happy ending that I can see.

Please note that this series is marked YA because the protagonists are older teens but I certainly would not recommend this to anyone very young.  The concepts are blatantly moralistic and political, and while we hear the villains tell us why they think they are right, they don’t make a lot of sense.  Don’t give this to a young person who can’t distinguish motive from means from ends.

4 Stars

Kingston Raine and the Grim Reaper – Unsatisfying Fantasy Humor

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Kingston Raine and the Grim Reaper is meant to be funny, and it starts out well.  The Grim Reaper is Death himself, cape, cowl and scythe; Kingston Raine is the fictional hero of the newly not-supposed-to-be-dead author Don Keaton.  Don writes enormously popular novels featuring the intrepid Kingston Raine but is stuck half way through book number 7.

The book gets complicated.  Death is the CEO of Death, Inc., and under threat by a hostile takeover and hostile unions.  Somehow Death turns Kingston Raine from a character in a story to a person who is now hiding in Limbo.  It gets more and more complicated, and less and less intelligible and less and less interesting as we go.

Death was the best character here and I skimmed most of the book looking for his scenes, which became less enjoyable as the book progressed.  Kingston Raine is a jerk, annoying and I skipped his parts.

The premise, with Death as a company set up to process souls in Limbo before sending on to their final destination, is intriguing and could make a likable story.  Kingston Raine and the Grim Reaper, sadly, is not that likable.

1-2 Stars

An Altercation on Rykkamon and Misguided Knight of the Onyx Order (Ancient Realms, #1) A.J. Flowers, Two Disappointing Novellas

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Independent authors give away short stories, as teasers to intrigue readers, provide an enticing story that makes one want more.  An Altercation on Rykkamon and Misguided Knight of the Onyx Order are both parts of larger series.  The authors must give us something to hook us in:  interesting and vivid characters or a blindingly fast and fun plot or a compelling back story or possibly a unique setting, as otherwise we readers yawn and move on, never purchasing another.

An Altercation on Rykkamon by Robert Scanlon is science fiction, featuring a brother sister duo who are on the fringe, possibly smugglers, who fight off a rival/enemy.  This trope – a fringe/smuggler/PI/small trader operating in space – may be easy to sketch out but it must be very difficult to pull off as a solid story.  I’ve read very few stories in this motif that are any good and it must be especially hard to do in a short story where the authors have little time to develop a back story or characters.

An Altercation on Rykkamon has a strong female lead that feels flat.  The back story, why the duo is hunting clues to their father’s death, why and how they ended up with his weapon, isn’t compelling, and to top it off, we have too many cutesy words like commPanel and laserSword.  Overall the story is just OK.

Misguided Knight of the Onyx Order by A. J. Flowers s fantasy with an unexplained world where the kings and queens apparently have magic and fight continually.  The plot and characters are wooden and left me feeling disinclined to look into the back story.

2 Stars Misguided Knight of the Onyx Order

2-3 Stars for An Altercation on Rykkamon

 

Shi: A Dark Adventure into Living Forever (Immortality Interrupted Book 1) C. F. Villon

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Shi: A Dark Adventure into Living Forever (Immortality Interrupted Book 1) has its good points and its bad.  On the good side the story moves along and kept my attention as I wondered what Eliza would do, the group she served, and how she would extricate herself.  On the bad side the story is ridiculous and the character left me cold.

Eliza made a very bad bargain 80 years ago.  On the one hand she escapes murder charges and now gets to live “forever”.  On the other hand her “forever” is contingent upon her always doing what her unknown bosses tell her to do, enforced by a drug, Shi, that confers youth and life, if she gets a dose every day.  Dose Denial is a death sentence because this drug withdrawal is a killer.

Characters

Author Villon presents Eliza to us as a normal soccer mom, aside from her assassin skills, secret hideout and drug problem of course.  Consistent with her “normal mom” persona, Eliza feels emotionally invested with her ex husband’s grandchildren, even though she knows none of them and detested her ex for dumping her.

Eliza is a murderer, a true villain, yet we somehow see her as likable and root for her to find a way to ditch the organization.  She shows her selfish side when she idly makes a crack to her drug administrator about him skimming – despite knowing that such actions will cause the organization to kill him.  She also will not give up the imitation immortality, and it appears she wouldn’t give up the Shi even if she could do so safely without dying 24 hours later.

Her character is inconsistent.  Eliza has no reason to trust anyone associated with the organization but follows Asher.

Overall

I didn’t like the premise or the characters but must admit I finished Shi and enjoyed parts of it.  I don’t intend to read the sequels.  I’m curious how it ends but do not care what happens to the characters.

3 Stars

 

Sparrow Hill Road – Ghost Stories by Seanan McGuire that Read Like Folk Songs

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Sparrow Hill Road is a ghost story that reads like a folk song.  The book is made of small snippets of story, between refrains about Rose, the ghost of Sparrow Hill Road, a hitcher who travels from one end of America to the other.

Rose is ghost who takes on living flesh when someone gives her a coat.  She makes her way hitching with truckers, eating in roadside diners and truck stops (but can only taste what someone living freely gives her).  Rose is also a psychopomp, someone who guides the souls of newly dead to their afterlife.

Several of the stories have multiple parts which connect and disconnect from the flow.  The author used headings to anchor us in time and place and introduced each scene change so the narrative flow was not confusing.

Overarching all of these vignettes we see Rose desperately trying to stay ahead of Bobby Cross, the man who sold other people’s soul to the cross roads to obtain immortality.  Bobby believes he owns Rose’s soul because he ran her off the road and killed her.  Rose escaped him then and now.  (It’s ridiculous of course to think that someone could obtain a lien on another’s unwilling soul.)

The ghost stories are OK and a few are better than OK.  When Rose acts heroically she is interesting and the stories feel whole, complete.  Otherwise she is tiresome and the constant repetition about the twilight roads is annoying.  Only one character is aware of the spiritual life or death implicit in the ghosts’ actions and Rose herself neither knows nor cares about heaven and hell.

I didn’t care for the repetition refrain in between each story and wasn’t crazy about most of the characters.  Sparrow Hill Road is more of a series of short stories and novellas than a true novel and we do not get a resolution for Bobby Cross.  He is delayed once again but not stopped.  Rose herself rejects travelling to the end of the road, to go to the next place whether heaven or hell and prefers her hitching present.

I would have preferred a story structured more like a novel and not a folk song turned into a semi-novel.  A novel requires a heroine with more gravitas than Rose who is lightweight, with not enough going on to carry a full novel.  She is suited to a folk song.  As a story this is flat.

3 Stars

I received this for free through NetGalley with the expectation of providing an honest review.

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Don’t Look at the Cover! Piercing the Veil: A Supernatural Occult Thriller by Guy Riessen

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Ignore the cover.  Please.  This book is pretty good, enjoyable with plenty of nutty characters, a wild plot and enough background to make it all work.  Just get by the cover, open it up and enjoy.

Guy Riessen creates a world where all the Lovecraft horrors are real, where the veil between our world and Evil is slim and frayed.  And researchers/monster-busters Derrick and Howard, with their team members Mary and Sara, are professors at Miskatonic U in the day and creepazoid slayers at night.  Derrick teaches astrophysics and is an electronics whiz with eidetic memory.  Howard, former military and NAS, is a peerless sharpshooter, teaches history and is a linguist.  Mary is a medical doctor and scientist.  Sara leads the team.

The chemistry among the team members is real and believable and makes the book.  We open with Derrick and Howard investigating a poltergeist report in national forest somewhere remote in California.  They enter a deserted house, find the meth operators cut up in the basement and barely manage to escape a giant bone monster.  In fact Derrick breaks his leg and the necromancer behind the trouble captures Derrick to learn as much as he can about security around artifacts that Miskatonic holds.

This small part and a few others were a bit confusing.  Howard gets away but Derrick doesn’t, yet Howard leaves and we don’t even see where the necromancer had been hiding.  With books like Piercing the Veil you usually find a few implausible leaps of plot, and if the author is good you don’t stop reading, you shrug and go on.  That’s what I did.

I’ve been reading several books in Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series and found Piercing the Veil a notch above for readability and enjoyment.  (Correia spends way too much time describing his guns.)  It reminds me of Charles Stross’ Laundry series more than anything else, but with less moral ambiguity, less bureaucracy, and more interesting people and more fun.

Characters

Piercing the Veil  spends many pages showing the interplay between Howard and Derrick.  Both are – or can be – completely serious, adult, dedicated.  In the meantime they play games like Dungeons and Dragons, drink beer and watch bad movies.  They are friends.  Derrick is the prototypical clueless nerd, desperate to go past “colleagues and friends” into romance land with Sara, but he’s afraid and keeps waiting for the perfect moment.  Howard urges him to man up, stop waiting and take a chance but it doesn’t happen here.

Riessen describes Mary as the stereotype girl scientist, right down to glasses, lab coat and pocket protector, but it’s obvious that Mary is far more.  She and Sara risk their lives working with Howard and Derrick to stop the Shadow Men, then the necromancer.  All four have unique gifts and one of Mary’s is the ability to see real vs. fake artifacts, to see through magical deceptions.  The book ends with her discovering that the recovered artifacts are mostly fake…leading of course to a sequel!

We don’t get a good idea of the villainous necromancer.  He’s obviously short on ethics, but we don’t know much about his motivation.  You have to be pretty motivated to kill a bunch of people, suck an entire town into worshiping the elder pseudo-gods, kill even more people, sacrifice more people, and send Shadows against the Miskatonic team.  We know his wife and son were killed in a brutal attack, but not who killed them, why or how that connects to his nastiness now.  That’s probably in the sequel too.

Overall

Piercing the Veil is not great literature.  it is entertainment.  It’s reasonably well-written, with a fast plot that’s fun to read, with characters that I liked, with a villain that is not so villainous as to be unbelievable.  I will certainly look for the sequel.

I tend to rate books at face value; so a book that aims to entertain and does so, that only minor eye-rolling moments, that keeps my interest, that I look forward to reading, that I stayed up to finish, I rate based on the entertainment value, not for its literary quality.

4 Stars (entertainment)

Not Dead Enough: The Windhaven Chronicles, Dark Fantasy

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Not Dead Enough: The Windhaven Chronicles by Watson Davis is a novella written as a series of short stories that fit together – and it is not the type of book that normally appeals to me.  It is dark.  How dark?  Very.  The main characters are a semi-dead demon trapped in a book and a vampire and the vampire is the better of the two.

I decided to read this after getting Watson Davis’ newsletter.  I get a lot of newsletters and most end up in the trash with me unsubscribed.  If the writer lavishes exclamation points or features teen girls I’m out of there!!  Like, totally out of there!!  (Teen-speak and exclamation points.  Ugh.)

Davis’ newsletter was good with light humor so I asked for the book – but didn’t know what Not Dead Enough was about until it arrived.  I opened it with a sinking feeling and ended up staying up an hour late to finish.  It was good, readable, with many interesting characters and an intriguing back story.  I am glad to have taken a chance.

The Empress has used sorcery to compel Gartan to obey her, to assassinate and kill and bring pain to himself and everyone else.  She is now semi-dead, trapped in a book that Gartan wants to destroy.  The stories feature Gartan’s creative methods for bibliocide, from tossing it into a volcano to feeding to a sea monster to magic.  Gartan slowly sheds his Empress-driven cruel madness and regains some humanity.

Initially he wants to destroy the book because he wants to destroy the Empress, but as he progresses he accepts that he is in part responsible for the mess and responsible to keep the book from relaunching the Empress.  There are hints that Gartan was not always a vampire and I’m curious whether he eventually is able to free himself from that curse.

Overall this was a very good surprise, well written, with deft handling of scene changes and many varied minor characters who pass in and out through Gartan’s parade.  I enjoyed the dialogue which was refreshing, down to earth and written the way you can imagine someone speaking.

I would give this a solid 4.  It was enjoyable and well written.  I intend to read more by Watson Davis (and stay subscribed to his newsletter.)

This was an Instafreebie book, meaning free.  The links here generate commission if you click them and purchase.

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

Tales of the Hidden World – Simon R. Green Short Stories

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Simon R. Green writes novels with darkish themes, usually with monsters or demons that threaten humanity whether in our normal world or the Nightside nightmarish world far below the streets of London. Tales of the Hidden World collects short stories and reminisces on  all his usual themes of death, threats, aging, and personal approaches to salvation.

Overall the stories are true to form.  The Drood story, Question of Solace, has the family Armourer Jack, drowsing at his desk in his last hour of life, wondering whether he served better in the field, fighting bad guys directly, or as the Armourer, developing new and horrible weapons.  He dies at the end.

The main character dies in my favorite story, Dorothy Dreams, or is converted into something else in Find Heaven and Hell in the Smallest Things, gets savagely beaten in Manslayer, fights undead to steal a treasure in Awake, Awake Ye Northern Winds, kills women and children in Soldier, Soldier.

Even the happiest story, It’s All About the Rendering, has the possibility of death and misfortune by red tape.  Jesus and Satan Go Jogging in the Desert has Satan going through the motions, doing his duty to temp the Son of God in the desert, knowing of course that his tempting will fail.  Christ comments that Satan could have it all if he merely repented, of course Satan does not.

I have mixed feelings about Simon Green’s novels and feel the same about this collection.  I enjoy his books as long as I read other happier novels in between with people whose company I like  His Nightside stories are dark with characters determined to throw away happiness and most of his characters are morally ambiguous.

Green included little reminisces about how he came to write each story – many were written specifically for themed collections – which was interesting.

I would give this 3 or 4 stars.