More Books than Time

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

Titan by Daniel Mignault and Jackson Dean Chase – Greek Mythology Turned Real

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Titan by Daniel Mignault and Jackson Dean Chase is subtitled “An Epic Novel of Urban Fantasy and Greek Mythology” and is the first book in new series The Gods War. Mignault and Chase have created an unusual blend of ancient Greek mythology with vicious high school and societal control.

Titan’s hero is young Andrus Eaves, adopted son of a rich couple, in his final year of school training to go into the warrior service of the New Greek Theocracy.  Titan’s world developed because the primeval Greek god Kronus defeated his children including Zeus and Thanatos (Hades or Death), and rules supreme over the tiny remnant of earth left after the devastating war.  Kronus “mercifully” let humans live, providing him with worshipers and service.  No one can die, not matter how injured, because Thanatos is imprisoned.

Andrus pretty much takes his life for granted, is satisfied with his future service until he begins to have segues that disorient and distract him.  He loses face when he loses a climbing test to his arch rival, and his teacher then assigns both young men to a final test, with a catch:  both must pair with one of the weakest people in their class and both must make it to the top before the other pair.  The evil arch priest takes note of the contest and this spawns the action.

Back Story and Setting

Mignault and Chase have built a horrific world, one where everyone is at the mercy of Kronus and his sadistic priests.  Everyone must attend temple weekly and kneel on stone floors for hours.  Any who fall over or settle back – even old and infirm – are turned into “worms”, without legs or arms, and thrown to Kronus to eat.  Anyone out after sunset curfew is fair game for centaurs who enjoy eating people, although rich folks may purchase tokens from the priesthood that allow them later hours.

The world has some odd side notes.  For instance, it is set on the US West Coast and Andrus’ parents are rich because he discovered oil on their former property.  Andrus’ father drives a new red Ferrari, although Europe and the Farrari factory are demolished.

Rich folks own slaves and the priests or the security force can condemn anyone to be a slave.  Poor people live in a ghetto area with few services and very little opportunity to escape unless they are able to pass an exam.  Andrus’ climbing partner is one of these poor folks and if he and Andrus lose then he will suffer greatly.

Characters

The characters were the weakest link in the story.  Andrus is fairly well developed but his new friend and climbing partner is less so.  Andrus meets and supposedly falls in love with his friend’s sister, but the romance feels more a literary convention than anything real.

The villains are stock characters:  the bloodthirsty and vicious priest, the nasty and vindictive centaur.  Andrus’ parents and their slave butler are reasonably well done, obviously with mysteries that are not revealed in this first novel.

Overall

Titan has some YA fantasy conventions, most obvious with the romance and the easy-read writing style.  The authors don’t challenge anyone’s brain with this book.

I enjoyed Titan for the most part, despite the tedious and unnecessary romance, and may possibly try the next book in the series.  You can get Titan and the rest of the series on Kindle Unlimited.

3 Stars

Bangkok Warlock: A Mark Vedis Supernatural Thriller Book 1 (Southeast Asia Paranormal Police Department)

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Bangkok Warlock by John P. Logsdon is book 1 in the Mark Vedis Supernatural Thriller series, also called Southeast Asia Paranormal Police Department.  Bangkok Warrior uses the theme of a supernatural police force protecting us humans and borrows the Paranormal Police Department Logsdon uses in other novels.

This is an OK novel, not bad and not great, a decent read while I was camping.  The main character, Mark Vedis, is an unassuming low-level mage in the Paranormal Police Department until he inadvertently bonds with a demon.  Not to worry, the demons in this series aren’t devils, more like powerful, obnoxious paranormal creatures it’s best to avoid.

Mark then must take on more challenging responsibilities and lead a new team in Bangkok.

The author gives us almost nothing about Bangkok as the focus is on the paranormal side, not the earth side.  The characters are OK, again not bad, reasonably interesting and somewhat fleshed out, but not compelling.

Overall Bangkok Warrior is a decent read for a lazy afternoon, best if you have a Kindle Unlimited account.

3 Stars

 

Heirs of Grace by Tim Pratt – Magic and Family

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Heirs of Grace by Tim Pratt came up on BookBub, came up on Amazon recommendations, came up on Goodreads.  I’m not sure just why it comes up so much as the novel is OK but nothing great.

The plot is pretty basic.  Youngish woman inherits an old house complete with ancient magic (source never explained) along with a good-looking lawyer bound to server her and some creepy half-siblings.  Two of the siblings want to kill her, but she manages.  So far so good, not terribly original or compelling, but this type of novel can be a fun read if the characters are good.

Heirs of Grace just misses.  Main character Bekah is OK, her romantic interest is blah, her eldest sister is hung up on pleasing their dead father and her brother is a homicidal power-mad nasty piece of work.  None of them feel real and the action and conflicts also slide right past me.

I read Heirs of Grace on vacation and it was engaging enough to finish, but not so good that I will look for more by this author.  Thankfully this is a Kindle Unlimited, not a purchase.

Note:  There is some cursing and bad language and Bekah is above the petty concerns of normal morality.

3 Stars

City of Broken Magic by Marah Bolender – Great Premise, So-So Characters

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Marah Bolender’s debut novel City of Broken Magic is built on an unusual magic system and world.  The city Amicae is built to contain and ward off infestations of magic monsters that spontaneously form in broken amulets.  The city designers did too good of a job and now the civic leaders and almost all citizens do not believe that monsters exist, and that’s a problem because amulets do wear out and break.  Sweepers are responsible to remove any monsters that form, a terribly dangerous job.

Our heroine Laura is a Sweeper training under the only other surviving Sweeper, Clae.  I kept expecting some romantic sparks between Laura and Clae, or between Laura and the new apprentice Okane but neither happened.  Laura is determined to learn as much as possible and develop her skills just to survive, while she dissembles about her job to her aunt and cousin to avoid worrying them.

The plot felt contrived and had a few holes.  Clae takes Laura to another city to present her to the sweepers from other cities, yet when they arrive they and their hosts are the only ones there, no one from the other cities, and many of their hosts are too busy insulting Clae to take more than a glance at Laura.

I’m not sure why City of Broken Magic feels flat, bland to me.  The action felt 3rd hand, almost impersonal.  The two main characters are decent, with Laura a strong-willed determined young lady who wasn’t going to die fighting monsters if she could help it.  Somehow the book just doesn’t connect with me.

I think the biggest problem is the secondary characters seem taken right out of central casting:  The greedy, foolish businessman, downtrodden almost-enslaved native, chauvinistic wanna-be boyfriend, matchmaking aunt.  These characters never read like real people, they are 2-dimensional.  There is also no true villain.  A few characters get in Clae’s and Laura’s way, but they are minor problems, not over-the-top threats.  Overall the poor secondary characters weaken the rest of the novel.

Several reviewers were not happy with how Bolender introduced terms that one had to infer from context, but I didn’t find this a problem.  We learn about the world the say way a visitor would, in bits and pieces.  I thought the author left several trails unexplored, ideas and situations that she could build upon in future novels, such as the intriguing city of tiers.  The novel felt as though the author had a start and an end and took the shortest path from one to the other without looking at the scenery.

Overall City of Broken Magic was a decent read, not one I can rate as high as I would like to given the imaginative world building, but certainly worth reading if one enjoys fantasy.

3 Stars

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance reader copy given in expectation of an honest review.

Trust A Few: Haruspex Trilogy: Part One by E.M. Swift-Hook Space Opera

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Trust A Few: Haruspex Trilogy: Part One by E.M. Swift-Hook is a good book, with well-drawn characters, action and plenty of moral dilemmas.  So why did I keep leaving it to play a game on my tablet?  I’m not sure, but the story became less compelling about two thirds of the way through.  It may have been me or maybe it was the fact that all the characters enmeshed themselves in the criminal underworld – not appealing – or that the true villain in the story appeared only a few times.

We have four main characters with a few others adding conflicts and challenges.  Durban Chola sees Jaz as little more than a thug, a hard mercenary, a man who survived the worst military setting imaginable, but I see Jaz as the central character, the glue that holds everyone together.  Jaz would say Avilon is the keystone, and the action revolves around Avilon, but it is Jaz who has the most complex character and is the engine.  I kept hoping Jaz would find a way back to Vel’s cousin and her little girl, the two people he planned to make his permanent family until Durban yanked him away.

The setting is the underworld of an enormous city, in a world ruled by the Coalition and its CSF security forces.  We know from the beginning that the security force wants something from Avilon but we haven’t seen what it is yet.

In fact it isn’t at all clear why the group doesn’t just leave.  Jaz claims to be working on setting himself up to do just that, and Avilon will stay as long as Jaz, but it’s hard to believe they are both willing to kill people and do other evil just to build a stash.  Durban will stay close to Avilon, but Charity has little reason to do so.

Trust A Few is hard to rate.  I liked it enough to finish, but it did bog down for me and I’m not likely to seek out the sequels because I don’t care enough about any of the characters to see how they play out.

3 Stars

Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series – Great Fun by Terry Mancour

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Like all Mancour’s Spellmonger novels, Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series by Terry Mancour  is entertaining, engaging, lots of fun with a fast moving plot, complex villains and earnest heroes.  This time we join journeymen Tyndal and Rondal who decide to pursue their knightly quest to rid the world of the Rat Brotherhood thieves, extortionists, slavers, kidnappers, murderers, etc., etc., etc.  The Rats aren’t too keen on being done away with and are highly decentralized, making it difficult to do more than annoy them with any one assault.

Of course Tyndal and Rondal find a way, along with helping Alshar’s Orphan Duke Anguin, make lots of money and yes, kill a dragon.  The book ends with us once more reintroduced to the real villains in the Spellmonger’s world, the fanatical followers of Sheol and Korbol, the undead, necromantic folk who hate humans.

The two young knights are interesting characters who feel somewhat real – albeit a little too good to be true at surviving impossible odds – and we meet a couple new characters, noble sibling shadowmages Atopol and Gatina.  Gatina adds a sour note to the story.  She is 14 and looking for a husband.  Per her family’s rules she must find someone as perfect and as daring as possible and she settles on Rondal.  Rondal isn’t too sure he wants to be settled on and finds Gatina’s remorseless hunt a bit unsettling, but like most teenage boys he’s also not going to look too askew at a pretty girl.

Even allowing for the medieval backdrop of the story I found it jarring to read about a 14 year old seriously contemplating marriage.  Today we call someone like that jail bait and her father would have more than a warning!  I found her too obsessive to be real, plus far too good at sneaking around and stealing stuff and predict she will cause problems in the future for the Spellmonger gang, much like Isily.

Mancour creates an unusual world with plenty of magic, good guys and villains, political intrigue and interpersonal problems.  The world in Shadowmage was slightly less detailed and the action a little harder to follow.  Mancour includes maps but they are hard to read in the E format and I wasn’t able to ground myself in the territory.  His characters jump all over the place, which adds speed to their actions and to the plot – and avoids describing endless marches – and that jumping actually made it a little easier.  I just didn’t worry about where the different towns were.

I was wondering how well I’d recall the characters and plot of the prior novels because it’s been a couple of years.  It’s a tribute to Mancour’s vivid world and people that I had very little problem keeping people straight.  The novel runs in parallel with books seven and eight.

Spellmonger Minalan plays a small role in Shadowmage, which I missed.  He is by far my favorite character in the series, resourceful, smart, not overly greedy or too ambitious and wary as heck of the Castalan spy queen!  I hope he has a larger part in book 10.

Overall the story is very good.  The medieval-style drawings of cats and rats and nobles and dragons are charming and add a piquant note.  I enlarged each one to take a good look.  Unfortunately the copy editor needs to learn something about homonyms, spelling, grammar, copy/pasting.  The Amazon credits mention the editor, but all I can say is the book must have been a muddy mess originally if it is still this bad after editing.  Some of the other Spellmonger novels are so poorly edited they are hard to follow; Shadowmage is not that bad although a few places we readers have to assume the author simply forgot words “not” or “no”.

Shadowmage was one of the 500+ books I lost (along with the first eight Spellmonger novels) when I sold my business.  I was glad to use my Kindle Unlimited account to borrow instead of buy this time.

4 Stars

Temping Fate by Esther Friesner, Cute Fantasy, Bridezilla and Summer Jobs

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Ilana needs a summer job.  Now.  If she doesn’t find one her parents will find her all sorts of things to do, starting with music camp.  Of course Ilana must take care that her job will not interfere with endless fittings for her bridesmaid dress so she can be her sister Dyllin’s maid of honor.  Dyllin has transmogrified into Bridezilla, scourge of caterers, florists and sisters everywhere.

Ilana gets a summer job as a temp at the Divine Relief Temp agency, assigned to the three Fates, one of whom is having a severe attack of Mommy-itis.  Ilana isn’t too sure about the work but she sure loves the paycheck!  Plus she meets some cute guys who also temp, albeit with heroes and other assorted demigods.

Temping Fate is light summer reading and most teens would enjoy it as would many adults.  Dylin’s panic attacks (NO!  The wrong color of ribbons!!!  The Horror!) add comedy offset by some real sisterly moments.  Ilana grows up somewhat, but don’t expect a serious coming-of-age novel as this is lighthearted fun.

3 Stars

The Battersea Barricades – Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor Short Story

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Mrs. Mack, Mrs. Enderby, and Mrs. Shaw are all minor characters in the mainline St. Mary’s book, and here they tell the story that we roughly know from The Very First Damned Thing.  The Battersea Barricades starts with Mrs. Enderby and Mrs. Shaw describing how they wanted to get involved with an low-key rebellion, “where they threw the Fascists out of Cardiff” and met Mrs. Mack.  They jump right into the story without giving a lot of rationale for why the Fascists were in power in the first place – they describe it as more creeping Fascism that seems innocuous at first, then later shows its ugly head.

Overall this is a decent short story if you care about the characters, but it is far outside the mainstream St. Mary’s novel.  There is no time jump, no Mr. Markham, no Chief Ferrel, no Tim Peterson.  The narrative is somewhat jumbled, as fits the characters’ feelings and actions at the time, but we don’t see an overview as to the rest of England.

The ending was weird and felt pushed together.  Mrs. Mack, Mrs. Enderby and Mrs. Shaw stopped the slow-motion civil war by jumping on a crashed bus and standing with the Union Jack in front of a very menacing gun helicopter.  It reminds me of the Tienanmen Square picture with the one man facing down a line of tanks.  We always salute the courage of the man who faced the tanks, but we need to remember there are two heroes in that picture – with the second one being the man commanding that first tank.  It took moral courage for him to stand down, to say no.  And just the same way it takes courage for the helicopter pilot to back off.

Now in the ending the helicopter comes back without guns – same pilot?  who knows? and salutes the ladies.  Very nice but not very satisfying.  It felt as if Jodi Taylor needed to bring the story to a graceful end so she used that method.

The ladies were young in The Battersea Barricades and show determination and grit, but not the skill and ability to navigate through the St. Mary’s world that we see them display in all the books, especially A Trail Through Time, an Argumentation of Historians.  It is as if Mrs. Enderby and Mrs. Shaw are playing Max’s role, that of the serious disaster magnet.  It doesn’t quite work.

I’m giving this 4 stars; I’ll re-read it (as I do every St. Mary’s book, multiple times) but it just isn’t quite the same caliber as the rest of the short stories or novels in the series.

The Steam Pump Jump – Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor Short Featuring Markham and Romance

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Last we visited St. Mary’s, grieving Dr. Peterson had his head and heart brutally ripped by by treachery.  Miss Dottle, who despite her crush on Tim Peterson, proved herself red-handed in league with Clive Ronan, responsible for spying on Max, that led Helen’s murder and Max and Matthew’s abductions.  Poor Tim.  He is heartbroken, barely functioning on autopilot.

Max has a wonderful idea to give him someone new, possibly leading to romance, possibly only to friendship.  Max recruits Markham to somehow shove Peterson and Miss Lingoss together while on their next jump, back to 1600s and the first steam pump in a castle, before Cromwell’s revolution.  What could possibly go wrong?

Of course Miss Sykes and Miss North come too – and get into a fierce argument in public and in the past – and Markham needs to sort them out, give Peterson and Lingoss time to talk, and yes, eat the entire picnic meant for six.

Once more we have the incredibly fun, zany adventures of the St. Mary’s gang, this time with Markham the central character and narrator.  Markham likes to pretend he’s stoic, unaffected by much, but we see the truth.  He cares deeply about Max, Tim, Leon (and Hunter), and is glad to take on Max’s subversive assignment.

Jodi Taylor creates such characters, alive, vivid, fascinating, full and completely human.  Add in a fun plot, good dialogue and the usual historical nuggets (that cause me to visit Wikipedia more than a few times) and we have another winner in this St. Mary’s short story.

You should not try to read The Steam Pump Jump without being somewhat familiar with the St. Mary’s crew and events so far.  At a minimum it would help to have read And the Rest Is History and  An Argumentation of Historians, Books 8 and 9 in the series.  Both books are excellent although more serious and a bit darker than the rest of the series.  The Steam Pump Jump brings us readers back to lighthearted fun and is a worthy addition to the series and the lore of St. Mary’s.

5 Stars

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Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett, Excellent Fantasy in an Unreal World

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Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett is excellent, well written with a unique magic system and world building, interesting characters, lots of action, and feels-real conflict.

Characters

Good fantasy needs good characters, people we get to know, people we want to succeed, people we believe could be real.  The best character  is Orso, the inventive genius behind much of his city’s and his employer’s success.  Orso is funny yet determined.  He’s loyal up to a point, and that point changes from time to time.  He turned his back on his first employer (for good reasons) then we watch him working to help his current employer, the Dandalo merchant house, finally to leave Dandalo to form his own house to save his life and that of dozens of others.

Sancia, the main character and heroine, is a little too successful and survives far too much danger to be believable.  She is a thief, extremely talented in part because she can touch a building and learn everything about it and who is inside.

Sancia loathes this ability because it comes from a horrific ritual that put a metal plate inside her head.  Sanchia escaped the island where she was enslaved, and came to Tevanne where she survives by stealing and by her wits and strength.  She is a little over the top, for instance she survives dangers that would instantly kill anyone else.  She changes from solely worried about survival to worried about other people, about the rest of the world and the dangers that she and Orso and the others are trying to head off.

Magic System

The magic users in Tevanne use commands, written in a language they do not really understand, to alter reality.  They create self-propelled carriages by convincing the wheels that they are going down a hill or support buildings by convincing rotten timber that it is foundation stone, dug deeply into the earth.

I’ve not seen this approach before; it is somewhat like artificial intelligence because it uses language to create the outcome in the real world.  People in Tevanne create a complete society based on this magic and the “Foundry” part of the title refers to the merchant houses using foundries to produce these magic items.

World Building

The world itself is presented as-described, but it is a world that could not possibly exist.  Sancia shows us campios – the protected, secure enclosed cities where the merchant houses live and operate – and the Commons where everyone else lives.  Yet the merchant houses apparently buy and sell their production to someone.  But who is there to buy?

A city or a world must have people produce food, others produce tables and chairs and houses and clothes, others entertain and others operate stores.  Yet we don’t hear about any of this.  Sancia would not herself be interested in these enterprises (other than to steal from them) which excuses the books blank spots on where the food comes from and who are the customers who are not themselves in Campios yet able to purchase goods from them.

(I always wonder about the economics and commercial underpinnings of imaginary worlds.  The best imaginary worlds make and inspire a sense of awe.)

Writing

Bennet writes well with good pacing and he provides anchors to the scene when he switches point of view.  We know we are with Orso or with Sancia or any of the other point of view characters because he shows us that right at the beginning of each scene.  This shows real talent because he does not use the “Well Bob,….” dialogue technique where the narrator clues us in but shows clues with the setting.

There will be sequels.  The book ends without a cliffhanger but with many loose ends and open problems that must be fixed.

Overall

I’m not sure whether to give Foundryside 4 stars or 5.  I certainly enjoyed it and the story is novel, interesting, the characters good except that Sancia is a little too over the top.  Oh, let’s be generous and go with a 5!

I got an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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