More Books than Time

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

October Sky Fantasy by Alledria Hurt

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October Sky is a novella by fantasy author Alledria Hurt. She’s written several novels and novellas available on Amazon although this is the first I’ve encountered her.

Most of the story is good, albeit with some potholes in the plot. Emmaline Simmons is an apprentice alchemist; in this story an alchemist works with potions to effect healing or other results. She wakes to hear someone in her mirror talk about the Well of Souls, which in her world is a fall constellation. Eventually she gets pulled through the mirror to help Cedric heal his king. She and Cedric keep one step ahead of the evil chancellor’s guards as they gather the ingredients Emmaline needs to make a healing potion.

The pluses:

  • Emmaline is a compelling character. I cared what happened to her.
  • The idea of brewing potions from herbs and things like werewolf hair to make changes, both good and ill, is intriguing. I’d like to see the author do more with this.
  • Minor characters Mr. Amon and Emmaline’s grandmother were well done, especially given the short novella length.
  • I’m interested in some of the events that weren’t explained. Why was the chancellor so determined to keep the king ill? Who was the stranger who shot grandmother and threatened Mr. Amon? Did Mrs. Snow have any more to do with Emmaline or was this a one-off encounter?
  • The writing style was good. Ms. Hurt crammed a whole lot of story into 44 pages.

The minuses:

  • Plot holes abound. The world on the other side of the mirror is the world of death. So why would the chancellor try to let the king die? Can someone in the land of the dead die again?
  • If the Well of Souls is the gate through which souls pass, then why are there not many undead people wandering Emmaline’s world?
  • Emmaline just happens to have the ingredients to make a sleep-inducing smoke lying around in her dungeon cell. Can we spell plot device? Same when looking for the other ingredients. Of course this is fiction!
  • Cedric, who should have been a major character, served mainly as a foil for Emmaline.

Overall I enjoyed the novella and the pluses outweighed the minuses. I’ll likely look for more by Alledria Hurt.

3+ Stars

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To Hold the Bridge – Old Kingdom Novella and Short Stories by Garth Nix

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The wonderful cover on this collection features the bridge from the namesake short story, To Hold the Bridge. I liked this story very much as it had the same flavor as the longer Old Kingdom novels Sabriel, Liriel and Abhorsen. Bridge is the only Old Kingdom story in this collection and I didn’t care for most of the other stories.

To Hold the Bridge gets started with Morghan, penniless orphan who has hiked a couple hundred miles in hope of becoming a cadet of the Worshipful Company of the Greenwash and Field Market Bridge. The company feeds, houses and clothes its cadets and Morghan is hungry, homeless and raggedy. Morghan is able to secure a position and proves his worth when a necromancer attacks the bridge with swarms of undead and vile creatures.

The other good story is A Handful of Ashes, featuring Francesca and Mari, servant /students at the magic college. The head of the college and her spoilt niece both dislike the idea of lower class or poor girls moving up in the world due to hard work and skill. They force Mari to read aloud part of the Old Bylaws, magic contracts that bind the college, and as a side effect, force the poor servant/students to wear ashes on their faces.

Bridge and Ashes have a sense of urgency, similar to the Old Kingdom novels, and underdog characters we identify with. Both are good stories, probably 4 stars on their own.

The Highest Justice is OK. The situation and plot leave me cold but I liked the main character Jess, a girl determined to help her mother have her last wish, even after death.

The rest of the collection is mediocre. I didn’t care for the characters and the plots are unexceptional and I’ve seen several in other anthologies.

I would be very disappointed if I had bought this collection. As a library loan it’s OK but I wouldn’t bother getting it again.

3 Stars

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Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik – Mystery, Terror, Magic in the Cold North

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Spinning Silver is not a sequel to Novik’s wonderful Uprooted.  The two novels have no characters, setting or magic in common, and, although Novik says both books are set in the same world, the stories and countries are far apart.  Spinning Silver is also not as good as Uprooted.

Spinning Silver gives us three heroines, and Miryem, daughter of an improvident, hapless Jewish moneylender, Irina, daughter of an ambitious duke and Magreta, the poor daughter of an selfish, cruel man has two brothers to protect.  The three ladies live in a country similar to Old Russia, where Jews are kept in their ghetto and in their place, always at risk for pograms and perfect scapegoats for a too-long winter.

Miryem realizes her father would rather let his family freeze and nearly starve than to demand repayment.  She takes over his job, demands her father’s debtors pay on their loans and discovers she has merchant talent and can turn silver into gold.  The Staryek king hears her boast that she can turn silver into gold and leaves a bit of silver on her doorstep.  Miryem is smart and takes the silver to her cousin’s suitor, a jeweler, who turns the silver into a bewitching ring that catches all eyes.  The jeweler sells the ring to Irina’s father.  Next the Staryek leaves a larger pile of silver, which Miryem and the suitor turn into a necklace.  The third time Miryem asks the Staryek king what he will give her in return; he will make her his queen – whether she wants it or not.

So far we have the outline of a Rumplestiltskin fairy tale, but the novel has far more depth than the tale.  The Staryek king terrifies Miryem, and she calls upon the backbone she found when demanding loan payments and stands up to him.  She forces him to see her as an individual instead of as a despised mortal.

Meanwhile, the demon-possessed tsar marries Irina because his demon wants to consume her.  The demon loans the tsar magic and in return, the tsar must provide the demon with victims.  The tsar is cursed with the demon because his mother bargained for her power in exchange for her infant son.  He doesn’t know how to rid himself of this unwanted monster and is terrified that his nobles will discover he is possessed and burn him as they did his mother.

Magreta comes into the tale because her drunken, worthless father owes Miryem’s family; since he cannot repay the loan Margreta works for Miryem’s family, eventually taking over some of Miryem’s collecting tasks.

All three ladies live in fear.  Miryem first fears her neighbors, then the Staryek king.  Irina fears her husband’s demon and knows that if the nobles kill him that they will kill her or imprison her in a convent.  Magreta fears her father and fears for her brothers.

The novel’s story is how all three overcome their fears by winning against terrible odds and tyrants.  This is the best part of the book.

The romances are weak.  Novik gives us reasons that the Staryek king will want and admire Miryem, but we don’t really see why Miryem would want to marry him.  Irina of course has no choice because she already is married to the tsar and we see hints that the two will be happy together, but there is no compelling love story here.  Neither the Staryek king nor the tsar are fascinating people, nothing like Sarkan, the dragon in Uprooted.  All the men feel like blank slates, only there for the girls to be strong against.

The other weak point is that the dangers feel muted, distant.  The characters tell us they are in danger and we can certainly see it, but the threats don’t feel as immediate as they should.  Even when Miryem fears her king will kill her for not completing a task the story focuses on her determination more than on the danger, and the same is true for Irina and Margreta.  All three girls either have or develop spines of steel and spend most of their emotional energy on remaining adamant.  I certainly appreciate that in a character – far better than moaning and groaning – the side effect is we lose the sense of deadly peril.

Overall the writing, pacing, world building are excellent.  I was a little disappointed because Spinning Silver is not as good as Uprooted, lacking its overall emotional punch.

4 Stars

The Librarians and the Pot of Gold by Greg Cox – Television Show Spin Off

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The Librarians and the Pot of Gold by Greg Cox is based on a television show and some of it reminded me of James Bond movies:

  • The initial sequence is fast and dangerous and has nothing to do with the rest of the plot
  • The action and setting are vivid
  • Dialogue is short and snappy
  • People don’t always think before they act

Overall I enjoyed the book despite being completely unaware of the television show.  The Librarians and the Pot of Gold references past adventures over and over, which is a little annoying, but readers who follow the show or have read earlier novels will likely enjoy.

This is a very fast read, two to three hours at most.  The authors don’t explain the characters or back story, presumably we’re supposed to be familiar already, but it’s easy enough to pick up and follow.  The good guys are obvious and the bad guys even more obvious, and there are plenty of secondary characters to add interest.

I would like to read more novels, written with a bit more serious intent, that use the Library concept.

I’m not sure I’ll read any further books in the series but do recommend The Librarians and the Pot of Gold if you enjoy fantasy with lots of action and color.

3 Stars

I received an advance copy via NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 Stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 Star

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

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

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

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

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

3-4 Stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

2-3 Stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 Stars

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

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

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

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

2 Stars

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

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

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

1 Star

Winter Wren by Miranda Honfleur, Blade and Rose Short Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 Star