Review: The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst

Sarah Beth Durst’s latest stand-alone fantasy novel offers a unique magic system, some quirky characters, and a fantasy-take on the “getting the band back together” story.

Years ago, five heroes defeated the evil Elkor and went their separate ways, becoming the stuff of legend. Twenty-five years later, Kreya’s legend has become a bit darker — she lives alone in a tower, keeping alive her husband (who died in the battle) through the use of dark and illegal magics. Increasingly desperate to find a source of human bones to cast the spells and give her just a few more hours with the love of her life, Kreya hatches on a plot that will eventually involve her old crew getting back together.

Of course, there’s a reason some bands break up. And as the band gets back together in The Bone Maker, Kreya come to realize that maybe they didn’t defeat Elkor as utterly as the legends say.

There aren’t many times when it comes to fantasy novels that I wish the author had extended a series. That isn’t necessarily the case with The Bone Maker. While Kreya gets solid character work, the rest of the crew doesn’t feel as deep or as well realized. I kept wondering if Durst might have been better served by making this a duology, allowing us to have a bit more of an investment in the characters.

It would also give us a chance to enjoy her well-realized magical system. I enjoy fantasy where there are limits or consequences to using the magical system and that’s the case with what Durst has realized here.

The Bone Maker offers an intriguing magical system, some dark character takes and is a stand-alone fantasy that left me wanting just a bit more. An overall success and one that has me intrigued to give some of Durst’s other fantastic worlds a try.

I received a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Forget This Ever Happened by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Learning that Cassandra Rose Clarke was penning a couple of Star Trek tie-in novels, I decided to sample some of her back catalogs. The first book that hit my library reserve pile was the young-adult urban fantasy, Forget This Ever Happened.

The town of Indianola, Texas is off-the-grid, even in the early ’90s. That’s because there are monsters who live out by the old power planet who live in a tentative alliance with the town’s humans. And anyone who leaves town forgets about the monsters and details of their lives in the small town.

In the summer of 1993, Claire is exiled to Indianola, Texas to care for her aging grandmother. When a monster shows up in her yard, taunting her, Claire calls the local exterminator to remove the creature back to the power plant. That’s how she meets Julie, whose family owns multiple local businesses. Claire’s grandmother is convinced that Julie’s family “stole” their family home out from under them years ago and is less than pleased with Claire and Julie’s strike up a friendship. Claire’s grandmother would rather she spent time with Audrey, the girl who is almost too good to be true.

The first third of Forget This Ever Happened builds the world of Indianola and the budding relationship between Julie and Claire. Pieces of the larger mystery of what’s happening in town and the connection to everyone are slowly sewn and established. Once the pieces are in place, the novel proceeds at a slow-burn toward the final revelations of just what’s going on in the town and why. Clarke earns each of the reveals, all while giving us a good dollop of teen angst. This angst comes in the form of Claire’s rising attraction to Julie and her feelings about it.

To say too much more would probably ruin some of the developments of the novel’s last third. Forget This Ever Happened is an intriguing treat with strong, female protagonists that earn most of the surprises from the novel’s final third. Given that Clarke’s upcoming TNG novel will focus on Dr. Crusher from season seven, I can’t help but look forward to that book arriving on my shelf later this year.

Until then, there are more novels from Clarke to explore — something I’m looking forward to doing.

Review: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue bu V.E. Schwab

Nearing her 23rd birthday in a small village, the Addie LaRue of 1714 wants nothing to do with her family’s plans to marry her to a widowed man nearly twice her age. Desperate to escape, Addie calls upon the gods, making a Faustian deal with a devil named Luc.

Addie won’t age. But she also won’t make an impact on the world nor will anyone she interacts with remember who she is. The deal runs out when grows weary and willingly surrenders her soul to Luc. But Addie didn’t count on the immediate heartbreak of her family instantly forgetting her, leaving her without a home and forced to find loopholes to make minor impressions upon the world for the next three hundred years.

Until one day, she wanders into a bookstore and meets Henry. And while stealing a book (Addie gets by stealing a lot of what she needs since people don’t recall her once she’s out of sight), Henry follows her and confronts her, saying the three words she’s been dying to hear for so long — “I remember you.”

Shelf Space

Author Fonda Lee took to Twitter recently, lamenting the lack of shelf space in her local Barnes and Nobel for new fantasy authors. In the post, Lee points out that J.R.R. Tolkien had “3.5 shelves worth of space” and Robert Jordan had “2.5 shelves.”

Putting aside that 2.5 shelves of space for Jordan probably adds up to a total of four books (cause man, that guy wrote some huge tomes!), I find Lee’s comments interesting.  I understand her point about new authors trying to find a way to break into the publishing ranks and even her point that it was difficult to find novels that had either been recently nominated for or won genre awards.

When Barnes and Nobel opened a store that was convenient to where I shopped and did my errands, I was excited.  I frequented the store regularly and enjoyed browsing the aisles to find something new that may not have necessarily been on my radar at the time.  These days, it’s been months since I darkened the door of that local Barnes and Nobel.   And a large part of it ties into Lee’s lament.

In the past five years, I’ve noticed that more of the floor space of Barnes and Nobel has been given over to items that may or may not necessarily be related to the reading experience.  Everything from toys and games to collectible figures to things associated with reading.  I’ve also noticed that the amount of room for actual books has decreased dramatically.  At first, it was a shrinking of the shelf-space for new releases, then slowly the aisles for each genre seemed to become smaller.  What was first two and a half aisles for sci-fi and fantasy has become one and a half.  Same thing for mystery novels.  And while we get a bit of space given over to new releases, I find that what whoever deems a book worthy of such a spotlight has very different tastes than I do.

Insert rant about how much shelf space in the SF/F aisle paranormal romance gets these days here.

I understand what Lee is saying about the limited shelf space being given to older books by authors who may or may not necessarily be still around.  And while I share her concerns, I feel certain if we asked the buyers at Barnes and Nobel why this was, it would go back to the old adage that things like Tolkien and Jordan move product.

Look, I’m all for the classics getting shelf space.  Certainly, they’ve a proven track record and that fact that they keep finding Tolkien to publish (I expect his grocery lists to be published at some point) means he and other authors are always going to take up some shelf space.  I just wish that the experience of going to Barnes and Nobel was closer to what it was when my local store first opened and not what it is today.  I feel like the stores have become more about book adjacent items and less about the books themselves.

And that’s a shame.

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

For most of his life, Quentin Coldwater has used the Fillory (think Narnia) books to escape the doldrums of his everyday life. Now at the age of seventeen, Quentin has been given a chance he never dreamed he had — magic is real and he can become a magician.

Instead of heading to a mundane, normal college, he enlists at Brakebills, a university of magic and begins training. The one thing the books never included was that becoming a Magician is difficult, tedious work and nowhere nearly as exciting as depicted in the novels.

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians follows Quentin and a group of students during the course of their studies at Brakebill’s. Rather than having one book equal one year of Quentin’s life, we’re treated to the highlights of his magical training — from the semester spent in Antartica to the rather odd magical game played among his school and others. The episodic nature of Grossman’s novel ensures that Quentin and the reader never get entirely comfortable with how things are going, including when Quentin and his love interest Alice test out of some of the first year and are moved up to second year early.

Review: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

If you finished Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl and wondered what it would be like to read some of Cath’s Simon Snow fanfic then Carry On will push your buttons in all the right places.

Alas, the Simon Snow aspect of Fangirl wasn’t my favorite part of that story — nor did I necessarily find myself wanting to actually read Cath’s final alternate version of the adventures of Simon Snow. So, I guess you could say that Carry On wasn’t my cup of tea.

Coming back to school for his final year, Simon Snow has just defeated the forces of evil, rescued his friends and is preparing for his great destiny to come. But things are all going as well as it would appear. His girlfriend, Agatha, was seen last year talking in the woods to his mortal enemy and roommate, Baz. And there are forces of evil attacking his school in every effort to kill the anointed magical world savior.

Simon Snow was a thinly veiled Harry Potter stand-in used by Rowell for Fangirl to allow Cath to have a fictional wizard to obsess over and create fan-fiction for without incurring the wrath of J.K. Rowling’s lawyers. We got hints about Simon and his world from Cath and her friends. And after reading all six-hundred or so pages of Carry On I feel like a little went a long way.

Kushiel’s Dart Read-A-Long, Week One: Chapters 1-8

It’s been a while since I participated in a read-a-thon but when I saw rumblings about one for Jaqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart, I was in.   I’ve had the book for a long time now, sitting on my to-be-read shelf.   And the read-a-thon was just the push in the right direction I needed to finally get it off the shelf and start reading it.

This week’s installment covers the first eight chapters of the novel and is hosted by Dab of Darkness.  If you’d like to see what others are thinking about this week’s questions, head over to DoD and you will find links to everyone else participating.

Here’s this week questions and discussions:

1) Here we have the earliest days of Phedre’s life, and we have the story of Elua and his followers. Did you note any similarities between Phedre’s beginning and Elua’s stories? Do you enjoy having these stories upfront or would you rather have had the stories shuffled in later with an adult Phedre looking back? 

 

First of all, I have to say that I love the opening line of the book.  “Lest anyone should suppose that I am a cuckoo’s child, got on the wrong side of the blanket by a lusty peasant stock and sold into indenture in a shortfallen season, I may say that I am House-born and reared in the Night Court proper, for all the good it did me.”

 

Early on, Phedre and Elua’s stories are those of people who must be comfortable in two worlds.  And they’re also characters who seem to have little or no control over their destiny.   Elua is only saved on the whim of one of the gods while Phedre has little or no control over where which court or noble that she is indentured to.    She seems to have been fortunate (for now) to have landed in Delaunay’s court because he encourages her to learn — not only “book” learning but also about the world of politics.  He’s also willing to give her freedom to continue her exploration of the city and her friendship with Hycanithe.  But I can’t help but wonder if it at some point this may come back to bite Phedre or if she will find herself in the court of another who isn’t quite as open minded and be forced to try and escape.

 

So far, I’ve enjoyed the stories that Jaqueline Carey has sprinkled in about the myths and stories from this world.  It’s doing a nice job of world-building and (I hope) setting up some things for later in the book (and possibly the series).

 

2) Hyacinthe has become Phedre’s one true friend. Do you think she is the same for him? The dromonde, or fortune telling, fascinates Phedre. Do you have a fortune telling story? 

 

I had to keep reminding myself that both characters are fairly young and that a forbidden romance isn’t likely brewing between these two (at least not yet).  I think that Hyacinthe is fascinated by Phedre’s views and his access to the noble courts that he might not necessarily get in the life he has.   I can’t help but wonder if at some point, as he gets older, he might not see his friendship with Phedre as a way out of that.  But for now, I think the two are just friends and a case of opposites attracting.  Or in the case of Phedre as someone she can talk to without worrying about if and how it might play out in the world of political intrigue that takes place in the court.

 

And, alas, I don’t have a fortune telling story.   Never been to one. The closest I’ve been in seeing how they’re portrayed in various forms of popular media.

 

3) The Midwinter Masque on the Longest Night is a long held tradition in Terre D’Ange. What stood out for you? Have you been to such a fete? 

 

One thing that struck me was the smashing of the glasses after the drink had been consumed.  It seemed like it would create a lot debris to clear up as well as a shortage of glasses at some point.  (I believe Phedre comments on the glasses beginning to run low toward the end of the night at one point).   I was also struck by the elaborate costumes that revelers wore and how you couldn’t be sure who was who.

 

4) Anafiel Delaunay has many secrets. How do you think those secrets will shape Alcuin and Phedre? 

 

Delaunay strikes me as a person who is very good at playing politics — and part of that is by knowing which secrets to keep and which ones to use to his advantage.  I have a feeling what he knows — and who he know it about — will come into play as things continue to unfold.   I also can’t help but get the feeling that his ability to keep secrets and mask his true feelings will come into play in the relationship he has with Alcuin and Phedre and the one they have with each other.  I can see them become rivals for his affections and approval and that his ability to withhold those may something that motivates them as their training and education continue.

 

5) Delaunay has a saying; All knowledge is worth having. Do you believe this is so? 

 

I get the feeling that Delaunay feels that “knowledge if power” and that every scrap that you can have is something that can give you a step up on others.   I think it ties in a bit to his being adept at playing politics.   I can’t quite see yet why he’s willing to encourage Phedre to have a friendship with Hyacinthe or why he’s willing to let her wander outside the gates, but I can’t help but think that he’s not being entirely magnanimous here.   I keep wondering what his motive is and what how he sees this bit of knowledge or favor paying off for him in the long run.  I get the feeling he’s playing a long game that will eventually lead to some kind of move to gain power for himself or to use Phedre to gain some advantage.  What exactly that is, I’m not quite sure yet but I hope to find out as I keep reading…

Review: My Real Children by Jo Walton

Have you ever had that feeling that you might have lived a totally different life in a parallel universe or if you’d made a different choice in what you later look back and see as a life-changing moment?

Jo Walton’s latest novel My Real Children examines that choice in the life of Patricia Cowan. Looking back on her life, Patricia can recall two potential lifetimes, both of which hinge on whether or not she accepts the ultimatum to marry her fiance Mark.

In one reality, the two plan a hasty wedding and settle into a less than ideal marriage that produced four children and multiple miscarriages. In the other, she meets Bee and the two fall in love and raise a family in the less traditional sense.

Part alternate history and part character examination, My Real Children is one of the more fascinating and compelling books I’ve read in a long time. Jo Walton weaves together two separate timelines for Patricia, allowing each to have its own successes and failures but never endorsing one timeline, life or lifetime as better than the other. There are moments of triumph in each one and moments of despair in each one.

Alternating chapters tell of Pat and Tricia’s life over the course of several years in each timeline. One of the more fascinating elements of the story is the creation of alternate histories for each timeline, which show just how easily history could have gone in our timeline.

Walton has a great deal of affection for her characters and it shows as we get to know each of these characters. Some of them you’ll love (at times) and some of them you’ll hate (at times). But you’ll never quite be able to put them aside easily or forget them long after the last page is turned.

My Real Children shows there is more to the fantasy genre than just sword-play and dragons. I’ve heard good things about Walton before and this novel only makes me curious to pick up her other novels and see if they’re as absorbing as this one was.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received an ARC of this novel from the publisher via GoodReads.

Review: The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

Scott Lynch’s Red Seas Under Red Skies ended on a heck of cliffhanger.

After years of anticipation and speculation, Lynch returns to the universe of his Gentlemen Bastards with the long-awaited third installment, The Republic of Thieves.

Wait it worth the wait?

Absolutely.

Lynch spends the first third of the novel writing Locke and Jean out of the corner he left them in at the end of the last novel. For those of you who may not recall, Locke was poisoned by a slow acting poison. And choices he made at the end of Red Seas Under Red Skies denied him the antidote. Now as Locke is dying in an inn of a room, Jean is desperately working to find someone who can cure him.

After exhausting all their possibilities and burning more than their usual share of bridges, Jean and Locke are approached by the Bondsmage. In return for curing Locke, the two must work to influence the Magi elections. Locke and Jean agree, but only after he’s cured do they find out that they’ll be going up against an old friend, Sabetha.

If you’re a fan of the series, you probably know that Sabetha is that one women in Locke’s life and has been the subject of hints in the first two novels. The good news is that Sabetha enters stage left and takes over the last two thirds of the novel. Lynch details the reunion of the trio as well as flashbacks to Locke and Sabetha’s growing up and romance.

Fans are likely to eat this up with a spoon. (I know I did). After two books of build-up, the story of Locke and Sabetha is about as close to perfect as it could be.

The one drawback to the novel is that the flashbacks to the our heros and the scheme Chains comes up with to send them out as a traveling drama group wears a bit thin as the novel progresses. This may have less to do with this plotline and more to do with the compelling plotlines taking place in the present and some of the cliffhangers Lynch puts at the end of each chapter.

The Republic of Thieves proves to be worth the wait. And hopefully this time, Lynch won’t make us wait as long for the next installment in his fantasy series.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received an ARC of this novel from the Amazon Vine program in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest by A. Lee Martinez

Helen and Troy are just your ordinary, average young Americans who work together at minimum wage jobs in a fast food restaurant.

Well, except for the small detail that Helen is a minotaur and the two have been given an epic quest by a hamburger god. And while details of the quest aren’t exactly forthcoming, the duo still sets out on a epic road trip/quest in A. Lee Martinez’s comedic fantasy novel Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest.

Along the way, they’ll meet a cyclops who will only do battle with people who have purchased a license (enacted to help keep his small town’s struggling government afloat), visit a dragon preserve and face pursuit by a group of supernatural bikers who may or may not have our heroes best interests at heart. And that doesn’t even take into account the quasi-governmental agency assigned to help our heroes.

If it all sounds a bit absurd and like something out of a Terry Pratchett novel, you’re not wrong. Unlike a lot of authors who try (and fail) to channel the humor of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, Martinez writes a humorous story, poking fun at the pratfalls of epic fantasy and delivering a handful of genuine laugh out loud moments along the way. (This is not a book to be read in company that will look at you oddly if you chuckle, snort or laugh out loud at a certain line, image or clever turn of phrase. Consider yourself warned).

And while Martinez gets fairly close to what Adams and Prachett do (and they make it look easy), he doesn’t quite enter the same stratosphere as those two giants. But he comes a lot closer than many other authors I’ve seen try and spectacularly fail in the attempt.

That’s not to say Helen and Troy isn’t a fun, entertaining read. It’s a mostly hit or miss comic fantasy that, for me, hit more than it missed. Certain threads started to weigh thin over the course of the story, but overall this is an epic road quest worth taking. This mis-matched duo of a minotaur and the popular cute guy delivers some solid laughs and witty observations over the course of the story. And Martinez wisely doesn’t dwell long on each of the epic fantasy stops along the way. He allows the jokes to have their moment and not wear thin (in most cases).

In the interest of full discretion, I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.