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

The Glittering Court – Review of Sneak Peek – YA Fantasy with Romance

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NetGalley offered a sneak peek of The Glittering Court, a novel of romance and intrigue set in a fantasy world similar to ours of 500 years ago.  This is considered fantasy due to the imaginary world, but there were no magical events or any of the other elements we think of as “fantasy”.

The story is straightforward:  The Countess of Rothford has a title and ancient family name but little money.  She is to marry a distant cousin and quickly decides this man is not for her.  She sends her maid, Adelaide, back to her family and takes Adelaide’s name and her place in the Glittering Court.  The Court is a school to train lower-born girls to act, dress and talk like upper class ladies so they can find rich husbands in the New World.  Adelaide’s only challenge is to not succeed too much because she needs to remain safely anonymous.

Adelaide faces the threat of exposure and forced return while around her society and her country Osfrid are churning with religious strife and the fallout from the civil war in neighboring Sirminica.  She is intrigued with man who recruited her, Cedric, and it’s clear from the sneak peek that they are falling in love.  That’s a problem because Cedric’s family runs the Glittering Court to supply classy wives to the frontier men, not to find a classy wife themselves.  And Cedric adheres to the outlawed religion; discovery could mean he dies.

The Glittering Court is aimed at teens, 7th grade and up.  The writing style – language, scene changes, themes – are sufficiently engaging that many adults will enjoy the book too.  I didn’t find any of the “and a miracle happens” events nor the abrupt switches among viewpoints that make some teen novels so disappointing and hard to read.  Author Mead does a good job presenting the situations, giving us reasonable dialogue and events, then finishing the scene before moving on.

While I was not intrigued enough to seek out the full novel, I do recommend this to older teen girls and adults who enjoy a romance with fantasy elements.

I received a free copy of the sneak peek in the expectation of an honest review.

Whispers Underground – Peter Grant #3 by Ben Aaronovitch

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I first met Peter Grant about a week ago where he met a ghost, Inspector Nightingale, an evil revenant and the merry crew of London police in Midnight Riot (see review here).  Peter and I hit it off big time and renewed our friendship in Moon over Soho (review here), now we are once again traipsing through London in Whispers Underground.

Peter is one of those characters you empathize with – you really feel like you are right with him solving crimes, studying Latin, practicing magic and trying to avoid major faux pas with the police force such as not setting Covent Garden on fire.  The only problem is that empathizing with Peter in Whispers Underground means you are wading through London sewers right alongside.  Yuck!

I’ve usually found that the second book in a series is the weakest, but this series is the exception. I liked Moon Over Soho a lot and Whispers Underground lost a little of the zany action and fast thinking.  Given the high 5 stars I gave Moon, all that means is that Whispers slipped to oh, maybe a 4.

Why was Whispers was less satisfying?

Peter was in plenty of danger in Whispers (and the two earlier books) but the actual danger moments, getting shot and buried alive, didn’t feel real.  Peter created a shield that protected from the bullets and hallucinated during the burial.  Unless Aaronovitch revisits his hallucination in later books the several pages spent visiting with the dream line Mr. Tyburn seemed like a side trip that went nowhere.

There were a couple off tune plot elements, like the visits with Albert Woodville-Gentle.  It felt like Aaronovitch originally planned to build more on the Ethically Challenged Magician but took a wrong turn. Instead he was a throwaway character that didn’t add anything to the plot.

The Lost Tribe of Navvies (tunnel builders from the 1800s who decided to stay underground) made no sense whatsoever.  We never learned why they decided to stay underground for 150 years.  Peter and Leslie were smart enough to realize there was no solution for the tunnel dwellers; if they were brought into the open the massive British social services and social requirements would descend and make their lives miserable.  We didn’t get resolution here.

The book had its fun moments, especially when Peter decides to go ceramic hunting and has to explain himself to the pragmatic Stephanopoulos.  New minor character Zach Palmer is a shameless grifter that we didn’t get to do much with and I hope we meet up again with FBI agent Reynolds.

Overall I’d give this 4 stars, very good but not quite the fun, clever novel we enjoyed in the first two Peter Grant.

Moon Over Soho – Intuitive Wizard’s Approach to Police Work – Ben Aaronovitch

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Last week I found the delicious Peter Grant series of London copper/wizard adventures by Ben Aaronovitch (read review of Midnight Riot here) and quickly requested the next book, Moon over Soho.  Wow.  What an excellent piece of fun/fantasy/true crime/romance/interior design critique!

Our hero, Peter Grant, gets deeper into magic and stumbles across the dark side.  We have at least 3 mysteries happening:

The jazz vampire
The gonad gourmet
The repulsive faceless guy
And if not already covered by one of the above, the magician behind the Strip Club of Dr. Moreau

The complex plot fits together and I didn’t have to go back and forth to clear up loose points.  Once again Aaronovitch brings us quirky, interesting characters and bit players, with lots of London tourist guidance all carefully layered into a fast, nifty plot.  I won’t spoil the story but be aware that Peter manages to cause tens of thousands in damages when he dragoons an ambulance and dumps the ambulance-ee into the Thames.  Then there’s the helicopter problem, the demon traps, his girlfriend’s missing face, his other girlfriend’s obsession with jazz….

Happiness is Learning Latin While Catching Bad Guys

Several Amazon reviewers compared the Peter Grant series to Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, I suspect because both series have the wizard-in-the-big-city motif, but the two are completely different.  Aaronovitch’s book has darkness and evil (the jazz vampires were bad by accident) but they are happier and happy-go-lucky Peter relishes the good and is joyfully ensconced  in the police, apprehending bad guys.

Detective Inspector Nightingale, Peter’s boss, is training him to be a wizard and we get a glimpse of the not-much-like-Hogwarts school for magically inclined folks that Nightingale attended back before WW1.  The school is long closed and Peter has to learn the magic formae with Nightingale’s help, hundreds of hours of practice, with the aid of obscure Latin texts.

Peter is a bit scattershot.  His friends and bosses all tell him to focus, but I think he is focused, he just lets his mind wander down the side tracks and dusty alleys of everything else that’s going on.  He works by intuition.  I like the guy.

Architecture and Bad Interior Design

One thing I loved about all the Peter Grant books so far are the asides and running commentary on the quality (dismal) of the architecture and interior furnishings where Peter goes.  We see nightclubs with gold and crimson flocked wallpaper, interview rooms shoehorned into former closets, offices with cheap wallboard and stack box (I assume another term for knocked down/you assemble) furniture, not to mention Tupperware office buildings.  I notice buildings and the art – or lack of it – in offices and it makes me queasy to see some of the atrocious decorating.  (Where I used to work replaced their modest wall art including a couple very nice paintings with enormous photographs of unhappy looking people.  No idea why but it was depressing.)

Summary

If Moon Over Soho intrigues you, then stop now and start with the first novel with Peter Grant, Midnight Riot (aka Rivers of London.)  You can catch up on the characters and back story if you start with Moon, but you’ll enjoy the book more if you read them sequentially.  Besides Midnight Riot was wonderful, so do yourself a favor and read it.

The Thief – Megan Whalen Turner – Fantasy with a Touch of Greece

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Author Megan Whalen Turner states she was inspired by Greece and used bits and pieces of Grecian history and geography to write The Thief.  These basic blocks plus good character development and an intriguing plot with unexpected twists made The Thief an imaginative fantasy while avoiding a retelling of Grecian myths.

The plot features Gen, a braggart and thief currently imprisoned in the King’s royal prison in Sounis, a smallish state south of Eddis and west of Attolia.  Gen made the mistake of bragging about stealing the king’s seal, then doing it and then getting caught, so he’s in chains and unable to escape.  We can tell from the get-go that there is a lot more to Gen than these bare facts – anyone who reads fantasies will recognize the noble-born-but-pretending-to-be-common character.  Turner doles out bits and pieces of hints to clue us into Gen’s real status but holds out the complete story until the end.

The king’s Magus retrieves Gen from jail to steal the Gift of Hamiathes, the stone that is the kingship symbol in Eddis.  The king of Suonis wants to Gift to force the queen of Eddis to marry him.  The magus has two younger men, Sophos and Ambiades and Sophos’ man Pol along on the journey to retrieve the Gift from its hiding spot.

So far this sounds like a normal quest fantasy, enlivened with humor and questions about Gen, and The Thief is a quest on the surface.  It is more.  The characters are well done, with betrayal, mystery, and a background of geopolitical reality that drives the magus on his hunt.  If the magus is right then the three countries must ally to keep themselves whole.  Turner left enough open to write several sequels but The Thief is a complete novel on its own.

Most of the libraries shelve The Thief under YA fantasy.  The book will appeal to teens but it has enough complexity and interesting characters that adults can enjoy it too.  It’s not long, about 220 pages, and a fast read without a ton of elaborate writing.  The small number of characters, about 12 altogether, keeps it easy to follow, no hunting back and forth to remember who is who.

Turner so vividly describes the terrain with cliffs, ravines, arid volcanic residues, olive groves that you feel you would recognize the country if you saw it.  A map would have been a plus.

Overall I enjoyed The Thief.  The tension between Gen and the magus, Gen and the two young nobles, and finally between Gen and the goddess make the book lively and the rich characters make it an enjoyable, satisfying read.  4 Stars.

 

Midnight Riot or Rivers of London – Ben Aaronovitch – Wizard vs. Revenant

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One of the best lines in Rivers of London is Inspector Nightingale’s answer to Peter’s question about wizards:

“No.  Not like Harry Potter.”
“In what way?”
“I’m not a fictional character.”

Yes, magic is real; wizards are real; ghosts and vampires and revenants are real. Father Thames, the spirit of Thames upriver of London, is real as is his rival Mother Thames who handles everything from London to the sea.

My copy is titled Midnight Riot, apparently the UK version is named Rivers of London.  Don’t worry, it’s the same book and it’s good.

Plot Quickie

Peter Grant is nearly through with probationary status in London’s police and is ready for assignment to something – hopefully something more exciting than the you-are-making-a-valuable-contribution-Case-Progression-Unit where he would shuffle papers when he wasn’t creating papers.  Peter meets a ghost while checking the area where a man was murdered near Covent Garden.  Peter doesn’t believe in ghosts but comes back a few nights later to ask the ghost a question; that is when he meets Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the only wizard currently employed by London’s finest and in fact the only wizard in London (or possibly the only one in the UK at all).

Nightingale recruits Peter (anything to avoid Case Progression) to help him since at the moment Nightingale is feeling a bit worried about the lack of magical manpower and other problems are poking up that need a wizard’s attention.  We have a case of vampires, a brooding feud between the spirits of the Thames, and a spate of completely irrational, vicious attacks.

Peter works with his friend Leslie, a more successful copper of the standard variety, Nightingale, assorted detectives, Molly the vampiric housekeeper, the children of the warring Thames clans and assorted opera goers and tenors to solve the mystery of the attacks and return London to its more-or-less peaceful self.

Characters

Peter is great.  Midnight Riot is written first person with Peter the narrator so we see everything through his eyes.   Other people see Peter as easily distracted but from our viewpoint, riding along in his head, he makes perfect sense.  Peter makes intuitive jumps and he is curious about things that seem peripheral to others but are in fact quite important.

Peter is resourceful, as witness by his method to bring peace between the Thames’ families and smart.  He figures out who is harboring the spirit that is causing the distressing attacks and cruel murders and is able to time his final intervention to save the spirit’s host from bleeding to death.

We see Leslie through Peter’s eyes and her words and how she compares herself and Peter.  She is a little less finely developed than Peter but interesting and I’m looking forward to meeting her again in the next book.

Inspector Nightingale and his peers in the more mundane side of the London constabulary are interesting too and poke up just often enough to keep us interested.  Peter’s mum and father play bit roles and I’d enjoy knowing his unflappable mum.

Summary

Midnight Riot is the first in a series featuring our hero Peter Grant.   I enjoyed the tight plotting and character development and am picking up two more books from our interlibrary loan system tomorrow!

The War of Words – YA Fantasy Fiction by Amy Neftzger

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The blurb for The War Of Words sounded so intriguing I had to try it despite it being YA fantasy.  An evil sorcerer has enveloped the land in a spell of confusion and unreality, sending mysterious shadows to battle the king’s army.  I love words, how could I not want to read a book about a war on language?

Main character Kelsey, whom the king assigned to the army, discovers a man burning reams of paper, each covered with a single word, during a battle.  She knows this is somehow related to the unreality but not how or how to stop it.

Kelsey works with her friends to find out the sorcerer’s plans and weaknesses, all while battling the never-ending shadows and trying to stay out of trouble with the army general.  Her friends are students at a school behind the castle wall, protected from the confusion spells, and an apprentice wizard Nicholas, his teacher Moss and gargoyle Newton.

Good Points

The scenes with Kelsey and the sorcerer, and the general with the sorcerer and finally the king with the sorcerer were well done.  Amy Neftzger imagined how words would look if we could see them colored as to intent and meaning, a very good way to show the tension among the enemies.

Neftzger did a nice job coming up with a plot that is a true problem:  How do you fight against a creeping sense of unreality, when no one can trust what they see or hear, when one’s words and speech are misheard and lost?  I would like to see her use this same plot idea in an adult book with better characters and interesting back story.

YA Fantasy Problems

The War Of Words jumped around, things seemed to just happen, it felt out of tune.  Characters came and went without introduction nor did we find any time to learn about them as people.  Kids took the lead to find the problem, devise the solution, then lead the fight, just as a kid would imagine things to work.

The book felt like a sequel, although the NetGalley blurb did not say it was.  Author Amy Neftzger’s wrote two prior books, The Orphanage of Miracles and The Orchard of Hope, in The Kingdom Wars series that used the same characters and back story.  Perhaps if I’d read those the characters would have felt real.

On the good side The War of Words did not have the romantic tripe that keeps slithering out of YA fantasy, no 16 year old girls who capture the hearts of immortal demigods, no love triangles, no gonadal driven decision making, no histrionics.  The kids were good kids who want to do what’s right.  That was a huge plus.

Summary

Reading The War of Words as an adult and rating it for adults I’d give it 2 stars. I would not have finished it had I not gotten it from NetGalley, but it wasn’t a bad book, just not a book for adults.

Trying to put myself in the reading chair of a teen longing for challenges and the chance to be heroic, I’d say 4 stars.  I don’t think kids would mind the way it jumps from character to character nor the sense that scenes were unfinished, discarded too quickly.  Kids would enjoy it more if they were familiar with the characters already from the other two books.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik, Excellent Fantasy for Adults, Magic vs. Malevolence

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Uprooted by Naomi Novik is one of the best novels I’ve read in the past year.  It has the emotional depth that adults enjoy along with the straightforward story of good vs. evil, magic vs. despair with great characters.

Author Novik  sets Uprooted in the kingdom of Polnya, a standard late-medieval place threatened by the neighboring kingdom of Rosya on one side and the malevolent magic of the Wood on the other.  The Dragon, foremost wizard of Polnya, lives in the tower in the Spindle Valley to guard against the encroachment of the Wood.  When the Wood takes over people or animals they are corrupted, lost inside of themselves and a grave danger to everyone.

Characters

I loved Novik’s heroine, Agnieszka.  She has internal strength that even she doesn’t realize and she’s not afraid to put her life on the line for people, especially her friends.

The growing love affair between Agnieszka and the Dragon feels real.  When they work magic together they blend their hearts and work together intimately.  Agnieszka can see beneath the Dragon’s scowls and snide comments and she knows he loves beauty, whether in people, or things or magic.

Agnieszka’s magic is very different from the Dragon’s.  Hers is song and ad hoc, nothing formal while his is sharp, crisp, clean edged and powerful. They are stronger together than separate and the intimacy grows each time they combine magic.

I’m tired of books with girls who are strong in the sense of physically strong, or extra special strong in magic or whatever, standard kick-ass types.  I like reading books about people who are strong because they have strong characters.  Courage, determination, honor, love, cherishing people, generosity and stewardship are all qualities that make people strong, and Agnieszka and the Dragon have these.

Plot

The book begins when the Dragon selects Agnieszka to serve him for 10 years – but he forgets to tell her he selected her because she has magic.  Agnieszka and everyone else assumes he will choose her best friend, Kasia, and she can’t fathom why he took her.  After a couple days the Dragon begins teaching Agnieszka – but once more he doesn’t tell her that’s what he’s doing – and she hates it.  Doing magic the Dragon’s way leaves her exhausted.

Agnieszka realizes her magic is valuable when her home village summons the Dragon to stop corrupted cattle and wolves, but he has left to attend another monster.  She stumbles into the type of magic that she can do – ad hoc, more wandering and less of a highway – very powerful.  She and the Dragon begin working together in earnest.

The plot is excellent, fast moving, with lots of intrigue and blind alleys along the way.

Mood

Uprooted is excellent at conveying mood.  We feel Agnieszka’s fear and loathing early, then the ever-present threat of the Wood keeps a sense of worry and drives her and the Dragon to develop her skills. Novik does a great job with setting the Wood up as a dark, evil force that is just there, never goes away, never stops being a threat even when it is not overtly challenging.  We feel Agnieszka’s terror when she fights off the wolves, when she rescues Kasia, when she flees the capital with the royal children, when she and the Dragon fight the Wood together.

Then the Wood turns and becomes more a normal forest, still a bit scary with dangerous, hate-filled creatures, but not the malevolent entity it had been.  We feel lighter along with Agnieszka.

Uprooted isn’t all danger and fear.  It has love and even quiet humor.

Other Thoughts

Like many novels with younger characters, Uprooted is classified as YA Fiction.  It is not.  It is a novel for adults, one that older teens will love, but one that we older people will find richer and deeper.

Be aware there are 2 sex scenes.

Overall this is 5 stars.  Excellent book with deeply realistic characters and a memorable sense of mood and emotion.

Personal Note

Uprooted is going to stick with me a long, long time.  It spoke to something important.

Something about the relationship between Agnieszka and the Dragon reminded me of something I read long ago but cannot recall, perhaps something by Patricia McKillip.   I kept hearing an echo but cannot remember what it is an echo of, rather frustrating since I enjoyed whatever the earlier book was and would like to reread it.

The Shadow Throne, Book 3 of The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen

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Jennifer Nielsen kept the same frantic pace with The Shadow Throne, the final book in her Ascendance trilogy as with the first two, but this third book felt flat, predictable and a bit silly.  Jaron, now the king of Carthya, knows that Avenia captured Imogen only to use her as a tool against him, yet he insists on going himself to free her.

Of course he gets captured, then tortured, which was the weakest and least readable part of the book.  King Vargan and his army commanders vacillate between wanting Jaron to cough up his military plans, or to force him to agree to bind his country to King Vargan of Avenia or, apparently they just wanted to hurt him.

Jaron acts like a clever thief, not like a king and the book is weaker for it.  Some of Jaron’s escapades are entertaining, as when he blows up the cannons sent to destroy his capital.  Some escapades reminded me of the nick-of-time rescues in the old Robin Hood television show.  He has an healed broken leg the whole time he’s prancing around Carthya and Avenia, dodging armies, rescuing friends, blowing up dams.

The characters didn’t seem important, more like pawns set up to fill the action.  I didn’t much like Jaron, he was a bit too selfish to be the real king he felt he was meant to be.  The ending where he somehow pulls a rescue out of the woodwork was fun reading but contrived.

I read The Shadow Throne right after finishing the second book, The Runaway King.  It was sort of like the feeling you get after eating a bunch of Halloween candy, yummy at the time but you really do know better.  I mostly enjoyed it even while recognizing the faults and despite getting bogged down in the very long section where Jaron is imprisoned.  (You can read my reviews of the The Runaway King here, and of The False Prince here.)

The Shadow Throne: Book 3 of The Ascendance Trilogy is the final book in the series, and wraps up the loose ends.  If you read the first two books you’ll want to read this just to find out what happens but be warned, it isn’t as good as the first two novels.

3 Stars

The Runaway King, Book 2 of The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen

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As the title notes, The Runaway King: Book 2 of the Ascendance Trilogy is the second book in the Ascendance series that features Sage, grown to take the throw under his rightful name, Jaron.  (See here for my review of the first book, The False Prince.)  Jaron is threatened within his kingdom of Carthya, by ambitious regents who seek to push him aside or use him as a puppet, and from the outside by King Vargan of Avenia, greedy to add Carthya to his rule.

Jaron suffers from extreme foot in mouth disease, incurable optimism, self confidence and unbelievable skills he honed for thievery, climbing, undoing chains and ropes, pick pocketing.  The book opens with an assassination attempt that leaves Jaron an ultimatum:  deliver himself to the pirates who already tried to kill him, or see his kingdom destroyed.  Jaron knows the pirates work closely with King Vargan.

King Vargan offers to take a spring in exchange for peace, such a good deal, otherwise known as tribute or appeasement.  Jaron’s father had made many such small-seeming concessions over his reign, leaving Vargan eager to take the rest.  Jaron refuses the deal.

From that point on the book moves at light speed, with Jaron joining the pirates under an assumed name, intending to turn the pirates into his men, his allies.  An audacious move, it nearly works.

Characters

Prince, then King Jaron, is both a cardboard creature and a person.  He is most stereotyped when acting as a thief, the bold challenger, the escape artist.  He is best developed when we see hints of his true nobility and kingship, as when he realizes that to give into Vargan once means giving him over all of Carthya, with timing the only question.

Love interest Imogen is a little more developed in The Runaway King than in The False Prince, but still a little weak.  It’s not clear why she and Jaron fall for each other.  Princess Amarinda is better drawn and an attractive character.  Jaron’s other friends and sometime foes are interesting but secondary.

Thoughts About The Runaway King

The Ascendance series is fantasy without a trace of magic.   You’ll find no wizards, no witches or sorcery.  Books like this, set in semi-medieval kingdoms with fast paced action, depend on the characters and the interesting plots.  Author Jennifer Nielsen does a good job with both, aligning the series to the older teen audience that enjoys plots and fun more than vampires and dystopian apocalypse.

I was restless and looking for something fun when I re-read my review for The False Prince and decided to check out the sequels from our local E library.  I’m glad I did as this was perfect for the evening.  Adults looking for a fast, enjoyable read that doesn’t challenge with a ton of mysterious magic or oddball names will enjoy this too.

4 Stars for adults, 5 for teens.

The Long Way Down – Nasty, Demon-Filled Las Vegas Sorcery

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It’s hard to like a book when you don’t like the characters.  Daniel Faust, the sorta hero in The Long Way Down, is a Las Vegas sorcerer who earns just enough to keep a roof over his head but not enough to stay clear of the seedy side of the town.    Daniel works as a private investigator – not clear whether licensed or informal – and takes on cases involving porno producers, half-demons and murders.

Daniel is meant to be the Good Guy here.  He takes on a case to investigate the murder of a young porno actress, discovers she was murdered, and works out vengeance on her murderer.  The vengeance turns out far worse than he had planned and spirals out to wreck havoc on a group intent on opening the Etruscan Box.

The The Long Way Down moves fast, which is a good thing as otherwise you’ll feel coated with the gunk under your bathroom drain.  The characters are all unpleasant, even Daniel.  If you think about it, a guy who’s willing to impersonate a snuff film maker in order to have revenge, is not the kind of person you want to spend time with.  His heart is supposedly on the side of the good and the true, but his actions show a man willing to murder – but only in the name of righteousness – and to steal and to cohabitate with a succubus.

Sorry, not my kind of guy.

The characters are well done, although icky, and a few are too nasty to be believable.  The best part is the setting.  I’ve not been to Las Vegas but this felt real.

Most novels with creatures from Hell feature good guys who fight the demons; Daniel in The Long Way Down cooperates with his girlfriend/succubus Caitlin to stop the apocalypse.  Daniel is too fascinated with Caitlin to wonder why her boss, demon prince Sitri, wants to avoid the apocalypse.

I finished The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust Book 1)  mostly out of curiosity, but wish I hadn’t.  It left me feeling depressed and not at all interested in further books about the character. The blurb for Craig Schaefer’s second book, Redemption Song, has Daniel enmeshed in the plots of Prince Sitri in order to keep his “girlfriend”, succubus Caitlin.  Anyone with the sense God gave a gnat knows to steer away from demons and the schemes of hell, but apparently Daniel didn’t figure this out.  I shan’t be reading this one as it sounds even more depressing and with more unpleasant characters.

3 Stars