Publisher: DAW

#BookReview: She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: She Who Knows: Firespitter by Nnedi OkoraforShe Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: African Futurism, science fantasy, science fiction
Series: She Who Knows #1
Pages: 176
Published by DAW on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, Firespitter is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy
When there is a call, there is often a response.
Najeeba knows.
She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.
Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.

My Review:

The story begins, as so many of this author’s stories do, with a young African woman on the cusp of change in a world that has already changed and been changed from the one we know now.

In the case of this particular story and this particular young woman and this particular version of the future, Najeeba is thirteen when the story begins, and is about to go on a journey. A journey that members of her family take every year – but a journey that females are not supposed to undertake at all.

Not that there are laws against it, but there are rules – rules enforced by a social contract that have ossified into restrictions that no one challenges. Not until Najeeba comes in and tells her parents that she feels the call of the ancestral salt road every bit as much – if not a bit more and a bit sooner – than her father and her brothers.

In the desert, salt is life. Finding the best salt, the purest AND prettiest blocks of it, and selling them for the best price in distant markets, keeps her family and her village alive and prosperous. Most of the time.

Because her people have historically been considered unclean, untouchable outcasts. A judgment that Najeeba’s inclusion in the annual salt harvest is guaranteed to make worse AND more violent – even as it confers upon Najeeba the kind of power that is guaranteed to bring down retribution – both human and divine.

And gives birth, literally and figuratively, to a woman who will change the world.

Escape Rating B+: She Who Knows is the first book in a prequel trilogy of novellas to the author’s award-winning novel Who Fears Death. In a way that story literally gives birth to this one as this one gives birth to that, as Najeeba, “she who knows”, is the mother of Onyesonwu, “who fears death”.

I haven’t read Who Fears Death, although I have a copy in both text and audio and plan to listen to it. While it has certainly climbed up the virtually towering TBR pile after finishing She Who Knows, I don’t feel like I missed anything by reading this book first. After all, it IS a prequel and not a sequel. It sets the stage for Who Fears Death without giving anything away or providing spoilers.

What it does remind me of, a lot, is the author’s Desert Magician’s Duology, particularly Shadow Speaker. Not only do Najeeba’s and Eiji’s stories start from a similar place, as both begin their stories as girls on the cusp of womanhood, gifted or cursed (depending on one’s perspective) with magical powers, but both choose difficult paths that their birth cultures reserve for men and they also find themselves telling – and being told – their stories by and to strange desert sorcerers.

They are not products of the same Afrocentric future world, but their worlds are similar nonetheless. Meaning that if you like one, or if you have enjoyed ANY of the author’s previous and/or successive works such as the Binti Trilogy, there’s a very good chance you’ll fall right into She Who Knows as well.

In the end – and also as a beginning – this is a great introduction to Who Fears Death AND The Book of Phoenix, which is a much earlier prequel chronologically to Onye’s story. Not only is this a great story in its own right, but it’s also short which means that it provides an introduction in an easily consumed little package. And if that consumption leaves you with a taste for more – as it very much did this reader – this is, oh-so-thankfully, the first novella in the projected trilogy of equally short and undoubtedly equally salty and delicious stories.

I am definitely looking forward to the rest of Najeeba’s story, which will be continued in next year’s One Way Witch. In the meantime I can’t wait to see how the mother’s experiences in this book and the rest of the trilogy are reflected in the child in Who Fears Death.

 

A- #BookReview: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
A- #BookReview: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth RevisFull Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Chaotic Orbits #1
Pages: 192
Published by DAW on August 6, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A high octane sexy space heist from New York Times-bestselling author Beth Revis, the first in a novella trilogy.
Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission.
But Ada doesn’t care—all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen—until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye. He’s not wrong—but he’s so pretty that Ada is perfectly happy to keep him paying attention to her—at least until she can complete the job she was sent to pull off. But as quick as Ada is, Rian might be quicker—and she may not be entirely sure who’s manipulating who until it’s too late…
A phenomenally fun novella that kicks off a trilogy of sexy space heists and romantic tension, Full Speed to a Crash Landing is packed with great characters and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the end.

My Review:

It’s pretty clear – at least to the reader – from the opening pages of Full Speed to a Crash Landing that Ada Lamarr’s ‘Mayday’ isn’t exactly on the up and up. Even if her little spaceship does have a real, honest-to-larceny hole blown in its side – taking her airlock not merely offline but blown out into little bitsies in the surrounding black of space.

That hole is unequivocally real and true – although every other single thing about Ada’s story sounds like a fake and a lie – even the parts that aren’t either of those things. The government agent in charge of the Halifax, the much bigger and better funded ship that has dawdled to her rescue is certain that Ada has got something going on on the down low that necessitated her ship’s presence in this particular sector in orbit over this particular tectonically active (extremely active) baby planet.

He’s sure that both Ada and his ship are after the same quarry, the cargo ship that crash landed, very badly and in multiple pieces, on that earthquake-ridden and volcano prone little planetoid.

Agent Rian White knows what his crew is after, but he’s less than certain about Ada’s stake in this particular game. Only that he’s absolutely positive that she has one.

But he’s so bewitched, bothered and bewildered by the seemingly open but utterly devious smuggler that he doesn’t figure out that she’s already stolen everything she planned on until after she warps away with the contents of a much-sought-after and destructively secured datadrive, the key to opening it – and, quite possibly, his heart.

Unfortunately for Ada, she’s all too aware that he has hers – and that it’s the one thing she never expected to lose – let alone to a government agent who is too good and too good-looking for his own – or certainly her own – good.

Escape Rating A-: This one is pure, sheer, unadulterated fun. It just hits on so many levels in a way that keeps both the reader and the characters delightfully guessing every step of the way. Because we know from the beginning that Ada Lamarr is, as that old saying goes, no better than she ought to be. We know she’s an unreliable narrator because she teases us – along with government agent Rian White, with her secrets and plans and wheels-within-wheels plot even as she’s running out of oxygen and wondering if perhaps she went just a bit too far with her opening gambit.

At least until it works – and gives her one up on the stick up her ass captain of the Halifax. Who is NOT really in charge and is absolutely not Rian White – whose ass is delectable and absolutely does not have a stick up it. (And I’ll leave the rest of the possible salacious jokes and puns right here no matter how tempting they are. Ada has several thoughts in that direction but absolutely does not go there in this first book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy – no matter how much she wants to.)

On the surface, this is very much a wheels-within-wheels long game kind of caper plot. Ada clearly has a hidden agenda from the off – even if she doesn’t reveal the full extent of it even inside the privacy of her own head. Rian sees the wheels spinning, even if he can’t see what they’re spinning around and about, Ada sees his wheels spinning and is attracted by his obvious intelligence. They’re both clearly playing with each other on multiple levels and that’s already fun.

Which gives the story a bit of lightness that brightens the world creation – because it’s equally clear that the way this particular SF world is set up is not all that light. And it’s a bit murky, at least at this early stage, whether Ada is on the side of the angels or on the side of the biggest paycheck. She’s undoubtedly morally gray, but one of the questions that we’re left with at the end is whether Rian White is even grayer, or not.

That the grayness revolves around a very interesting question adds a bit of depth to that world creation. Because this isn’t a case where the established government is evil in one way or another, the question is whether or not it can possibly be effective at fixing what’s been broken. Not a question of whether or not it’s on the side of the angels, but whether or not it has enough angels on its side to get the shit that needs to get done, done.

Between the caper aspects, the questions about which side is the righteous one in a universe going mad, and the possibility of romance – or at least eventual sexytimes – between its deceitful heroine and its play-mostly-by-the-rules hero, Full Speed to a Crash Landing fits right into the marvelous moment that science fiction romance is currently having.

So if you’ve fallen hard for Valerie Valdes’ Chilling Effect, Rachel Bach’s Fortune’s Pawn, Cat Rambo’s You Sexy Thing and/or Constance Fay’s marvelous Fiasco and Calamity, you’ll be as pleased as I am to know that the second book in the Chaotic Orbits trilogy, How to Steal a Galaxy, will be speeding our way in December. Rian White will be staking out an auction hoping it will attract Ada – while Ada plans to convince him to join her on the dark side – where the cookies are – by kidnapping him into her own questionably legal plans.

It should be a BLAST!

A+ #AudioBookReview: Ghostdrift by Suzanne Palmer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A+ #AudioBookReview: Ghostdrift by Suzanne PalmerGhostdrift (Finder Chronicles #4) by Suzanne Palmer
Narrator: Paul Woodson
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Series: Finder Chronicles #4
Pages: 384
Length: 13 hours and 37 minutes
Published by Blackstone Publishing, DAW on May 28, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The fourth and final installment of the Finder Chronicles, a hopepunk sci-fi caper described as Macgyver meets Firefly, by Hugo Award–winner Suzanne Palmer

Fergus Ferguson, professional finder, always knew his semi-voluntary exile wouldn’t last, but he isn’t expecting a friend to betray him. One of the galaxy’s most dangerous space pirates, Bas Belos, wants him, and what Belos wants, he gets. Belos needs help finding out what happened to his twin sister, who mysteriously disappeared at the edges of space years ago, and he makes Fergus an offer he can’t refuse.

Mysterious disappearances and impossible answers are Fergus’s specialties. After he reluctantly joins Belos and his crew aboard the pirate ship Sidewider, he discovers that Belos is being tracked by the Alliance. Seeking to stay one step ahead of the Alliance, Fergus and Belos find themselves marooned in the middle of the Gap between spiral arms of our galaxy, dangerously near hostile alien territory, and with an Alliance ship in hot pursuit.

That’s just the beginning of the complications for Fergus’ newest—and possibly last—job. The puzzle is much bigger than just Belos’s lost sister, and the question of his future, retirement or not, depends on his ability to negotiate a path between aliens, criminals, and the most powerful military force he’s ever encountered. The future of entire planets hangs in the balance, and it remains to be seen if it’s too big for one determined man and his cranky cat.

My Review:

I couldn’t resist. Even though I knew going in this was one of those situations where you don’t know whether to cry because it’s over or smile because it happened, I had to find out just what happened to Fergus Ferguson that led to Ghostdrift being the final book in the utterly awesome Finder Chronicles.

Over the course of the series (Finder, Driving the Deep, The Scavenger Door and now Ghostdrift), Fergus has proven to be the consummate survivor. Not because he’s particularly good at any one thing except finding the stuff he’s been contracted to find, but because no plan seems to survive contact with Fergus – not even his own. No matter how big and how scary the villains are, no matter how many layers within layers of plans they have to get away with whatever it is they think they’re getting away with, the minute Fergus happens to them Murphy’s Law arrives in his wake and the shit keeps hitting the fan – both theirs and his – until he emerges from the wreck of everything they expected.

It’s a gift. It’s also a curse. A judgment that does not depend on whether you are on the side of Fergus or his enemies. As I said, Fergus’s own plans don’t survive contact with him either.

But it does explain why his friend (or sometimes frenemy) Qai doesn’t feel all that terrible about kidnapping Fergus and delivering him – alive and unharmed, along with his cat Mister Feefs – into the custody of notorious space pirate Bas Belos in exchange for the safe return of Qai’s partner Maha – yet another of Fergus’s friends.

Qai knows Fergus can handle himself and knows that Belos’ plan isn’t likely to survive Fergus either. She’s basically delivering her revenge on Belos for kidnapping her partner in a Fergus Ferguson shaped form and isn’t sorry about it in the least.

She’s sure she’s brought Belos more trouble than even an interstellar space pirate can handle. And she’s right. It’s the way in which she’s right and the places that right takes the pirate, his ship, his crew, Fergus AND Mister Feefs, that makes the whole entire story.

Fergus’s story. Belos’s story. And quite possibly the whole damn universe’s story – again – if Fergus doesn’t manage to pull off one more doggedly determined find.

Escape Rating A+: June is Audiobook Month, and this final book in the Finder Chronicles was the perfect audiobook to listen to this month, particularly as I listened to the first book in the series, Finder, in June of 2019.

Even though I didn’t want this story to end – I desperately needed to know how it ended, so I started alternating between audio and text just past halfway – as much as I hated to miss out on the totality of narrator Paul Woodson’s perfect read of Fergus Ferguson’s universe-weary, ‘been there, done that, got all the t-shirts’ voice.

(Fergus really does have all the t-shirts – and he wears them throughout the series. The man has definitely been around.)

The series as a whole rides or dies on that voice, to the point that if you like Fergus you’ll love the series but if he drives you as insane as he does the people he runs up AGAINST you probably won’t. Also, if you like a universe-weary, first-person or first-person focused protagonist, you’ll probably also love Michael Mammay’s Carl Butler in his Planetside series. (I digress, just a bit.)

What about this particular entry in the series? It combines some really classic tropes into one single terrific story.

First there’s the whole ‘White Whale’ angle. Actually, it’s two of those angles. On the one hand, pirate captain Bas Belos just wants to find out what happened to his twin sister and her crew. It’s been ten years since she disappeared, he knows that the ‘Alliance’s’ claim that they killed her and hers was a lie. He’s kidnapped/hired Fergus to lead him towards closure – no matter what it takes.

And then there’s the real Captain Ahab of this story, an Alliance captain for whom Bas Belos is his white whale, and he’ll trail the pirate literally past the end of the galaxy to catch him – even if he’s leading his crew straight to their demise. And wasn’t that Ahab all over?

But then there’s the third corner of this delicious story, the one where Belos and his crew, the Alliance captain and his, all end up stranded in the gap between galaxies, on a little tiny planet that threatens to be their own ‘Gilligan’s Island’ – because it already has.

Together, those three plots, Belos’ need for closure, Captain Ahab – actually Captain Todd – following Belos where no one REALLY should have gone before, or again, and all the crews stuck on their very own tiny Gilligan’s Island planetoid, doing their best – or worst – to get along well enough to get back home.

With Fergus in the middle, knowing his personal goose is cooked either way. Unless he can find a really, truly, seriously out-of-the-box solution for his own dilemma as well as theirs.

I loved this last adventure in the Finder Chronicles. On top of this beautiful layer cake of a story, there was also a bit of marvelous icing in Fergus’ relationship with Mister Feefs that will add extra feels for anyone who has ever loved a companion animal and grounded their very existence on that love. (Don’t worry about Mister Feefs, he comes out of this adventure just fine – it’s Fergus we have to worry about. As usual.)

The only sour note in this whole thing is in the author’s note at the end, where she declares that this really is Fergus’ last recorded adventure. And it could be, she left him in a good place – WITH MISTER FEEFS – and they’ll be just fine. But she also left them in a place where it’s clear that Fergus will manage to make his way back to his own galaxy, one way or another, given enough time and supplies. And he has the supplies. So he could come back. We could come back at some point in the future to see whose plans Fergus is destroying at that point in his life. I don’t expect we will, but I can still hope.

#BookReview: Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Floating Hotel by Grace CurtisFloating Hotel by Grace Curtis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, science fiction, science fiction mystery, space opera
Pages: 304
Published by DAW on March 19, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This cozy debut science fiction novel tells a story of misfits, rebels, found family—and a mystery that spans the stars
Welcome to the Grand Abeona home of the finest food, the sweetest service, and the very best views the galaxy has to offer. All year round it moves from planet to planet, system to system, pampering guests across the furthest reaches of the milky way. The last word in sub-orbital luxury—and an absolute magnet for intrigue. Intrigues such Why are there love poems in the lobby inbox? How many Imperial spies are currently on board? What is the true purpose of the Problem Solver’s conference? And perhaps most pertinently— who is driving the ship?
Each guest has a secret, every member of staff a universe unto themselves. At the center of these interweaving lives and interlocking mysteries stands Carl, one time stowaway, longtime manager, devoted caretaker to the hotel. It’s the love of his life and the only place he’s ever called home. But as forces beyond Carl’s comprehension converge on the Abeona, he has to face one final when is it time to let go?

My Review:

The Grand Abeona, the ‘floating hotel’ of the title, isn’t quite as grand as it used to be. Both as a place and as a story, It also isn’t quite as cozy as the blurb leads the reader to believe. Which does, however, make it much more interesting as a story.

It’s more layered than cozy, rather like an onion. Complete with tears.

Traveling through Imperial-controlled space, the Grand Abeona serves the function that once upon a time the circus used to fill in small town America. It’s a place that blows into town – or above town, as the case might be – livens up an otherwise humdrum life for a few hours or days, and then leaves, taking its crew of roadies and roustabouts along with it.

Along with, occasionally, a local or two who can’t resist the bright lights or can’t bear or afford to stay where they’ve always been for another minute, now that they’ve seen a way out.

So, the story of Floating Hotel begins with young Carl, who doesn’t so much stow himself away as he does slouch around in plain sight hoping for a chance to work his way aboard the most beautiful place he’s ever seen and away from his home planet. A place that is literally eating itself from the inside out as its people mine its resources to their own and its destruction under the orders of the rapacious empire.

Because they have no choice. It’s mine now and die later, or stop now and die now. It’s happened all over the empire and it’s happening right now on Hoxxes. But not to Carl, because he’s found a way out.

Middle-aged Carl is now the manager of the Grand Abeona, and that later he staved off all those years ago by leaving with the floating hotel is now coming for him and everyone aboard the place he’s come to call home. The place that he has let consume him, one day and one task at a time.

So welcome aboard the last voyage of the Grand Abeona. Be sure to take your heart and all your belongings with you on your way out.

Escape Rating B: This isn’t nearly as cozy as I was expecting from both the blurb AND the opening Prologue. That introduction makes it seem like its going to be Carl’s story about rising through the ranks of the hotel and that it will follow him along the way.

It isn’t and it doesn’t. While Carl opens the story – and also closes it – we absolutely don’t follow his rise through the ranks. He’s already there when the real story begins. We also don’t follow Carl, although he’s clearly the center around which the hotel revolves – even if no one quite sees him that way.

Instead, the story skips around through the crew and the regular guests, focusing on one after another as the saga of the ship’s last voyage gets told. That kaleidoscope of perspectives keeps the reader from getting invested in any one of the characters, but does show all of the facets of the hotel as it is – and pokes its way around the edges of the many, many secrets that are being kept aboard her.

One ginormous, galaxy-spanning secret most of all.

On the one hand, we have the ship and its denizens, each telling their individual bit of the story. And on the other, we have the ship and its denizens, each revealing a bit of their own secrets, as well as a soupçon of the BIG secret, while painting an excruciatingly unflattering portrait of the Empire they have escaped by becoming part of the ship’s company.

Initially believing that this was going to be cozier, The Floating Hotel gave me vibes of several recent SF stories that featured, or began with, entertainment venues in the space lanes, even if they branched out later into either mystery or space opera. I’m particularly thinking of The Spare Man, You Sexy Thing, and Veronica Scott’s Star Cruise series.

In the end, the SF book I was most reminded of is Khan Wong’s awesome The Circus Infinite, although I have to say that The Floating Hotel isn’t quite as awesome because The Circus Infinite was just a WOW of a book from beginning to end. (Therefore, saying it’s not quite as awesome as such an absolutely fantastic book means it was still pretty damn good.)

But it’s in that correlation between the circus and the cruise ship that gives the two a bit of the same resonance, as both stories begin with a character who desperately needs the kind of escape that constant traveling among the stars can provide, and finds themselves in a world that is filled with more secrets than just their own. Secrets that they will have to go to extreme lengths to keep.

So if you liked any of the above mentioned books, or if you have fond memories of either the very old book Hotel by Arthur Hailey, or the slightly less old TV series based on it, The Floating Hotel will both tickle that memory AND tell a fascinating story about the lengths that can be taken in running away and the crimes that can be committed in forcing someone back to the place they’re supposed to belong.

Review: Like Thunder by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: Like Thunder by Nnedi OkoraforLike Thunder (The Desert Magician's Duology #2) by Nnedi Okorafor
Narrator: Délé Ogundiran
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: African Futurism, climate fiction, fantasy, science fiction
Series: Desert Magician's Duology #2
Pages: 336
Length: 10 hours and 23 minutes
Published by DAW, Tantor Audio on November 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This brand-new sequel to Nnedi Okorafor’s Shadow Speaker contains the powerful prose and compelling stories that have made Nnedi Okorafor a star of the literary science fiction and fantasy space and put her at the forefront of Africanfuturist fiction
Niger, West Africa, 2077
Welcome back. This second volume is a breathtaking story that sweeps across the sands of the Sahara, flies up to the peaks of the Aïr Mountains, cartwheels into a wild megacity—you get the idea.
I am the Desert Magician; I bring water where there is none.
This book begins with Dikéogu Obidimkpa slowly losing his mind. Yes, that boy who can bring rain just by thinking about it is having some…issues. Years ago, Dikéogu went on an epic journey to save Earth with the shadow speaker girl, Ejii Ubaid, who became his best friend. When it was all over, they went their separate ways, but now he’s learned their quest never really ended at all.
So Dikéogu, more powerful than ever, reunites with Ejii. He records this story as an audiofile, hoping it will help him keep his sanity or at least give him something to leave behind. Smart kid, but it won’t work—or will it?
I can tell you it won’t be like before. Our rainmaker and shadow speaker have changed. And after this, nothing will ever be the same again.
As they say, ‘ Onye amaro ebe nmili si bido mabaya ama ama onye nyelu ya akwa oji welu ficha aru .’
Or, ‘If you do not remember where the rain started to beat you, you will not remember who gave you the towel with which to dry your body.’

My Review:

Like Thunder is the second half of the Desert Magician’s Duology, and the follow-up to the utterly excellent Shadow Speaker. Like that first book, Like Thunder is a story within a story, as the whole duology is a tale of a possible future, and a lesson to be learned, told by the Desert Magician himself.

But it is not the Desert Magician’s story, no matter how much that being meddled with the characters and the events that they faced. Just as Shadow Speaker was the story of Eiji Ugabe, the titular shadow speaker herself, Like Thunder represents her best friend Dikéogu Obidimkpa’s side of the events that followed.

Shadow speaking is but one of the many transformations and strange, new powers brought into this world after the ‘peace bombs’ were dropped and the oncoming nuclear catastrophe was transformed into something survivable for the human population.

A survival that seems to be more contingent on the adaptability of not just the humans of Earth, but also the sentient populations of ALL the worlds that have become interconnected after Earth’s ‘Great Change’ caused a ‘Great Merge’ of several formerly separated worlds.

The story in Shadow Speaker very much represented Eiji’s perspective on the world, as Eiji’s first impulse is always to talk, and to listen. An impulse that combines her youthful belief that people CAN be better if given the opportunity, and is likely a result of her talent for speaking with not just the shadows of the dead, but directly into the minds of other people and animals.

Her talent is to see others’ points of view and to project her own. She’s young enough to believe that if there is understanding, there can be peace.

Like Thunder is not Eiji’s story, and it shouldn’t be. Instead, it’s a kind of mirror image. Just as Eiji’s talent leads her to foster peace and understanding, her friend Dikéogu’s talent is violent. Dikéogu is a stormbringer, someone who brings all of the violence of nature and all of the violence visited upon him in his scarred past to every encounter with his friends, with his enemies, and with his world.

And within himself.

The world through which we follow Dikéogu in this concluding volume of the Desert Magician’s Duology is the direct result of Eiji’s peacemaking in her book. Because, unfortunately for the world but fortunate for the reader enthralled with their story, Eiji didn’t really make peace because peace is not what most of the people present for the so-called ‘peace conference’ had any desire for whatsoever.

And have been maneuvering in the background to ensure that the only peace that results in the end is the peace of the grave. Someone is going to have to die. Too many people already have. It’s only a question of whether Dikéogu and Eiji’s feared and reviled powers will save the world – or end it.

Escape Rating A-: As much as I loved Shadow Speaker, I came into this second book with some doubts and quibbles – all of which were marvelously dashed to the ground at the very beginning of Dikéogu’s story.

Eiji and Dikéogu were both very young when their adventure began, but by the time they met they had both already seen enough hardship and disaster to fill a whole lifetime for someone else. But Eiji was just a touch older than Dikéogu, and the differences between her fourteen and his thirteen mattered a lot in terms of maturity.

In other words, Eiji was definitely on the cusp of adulthood in her book, making adult decisions with huge, literally world-shaking consequences, while Dikéogu frequently came off as a whiny little shit, an impression not helped AT ALL by the higher pitched voice used by the narrator for his character.

Dikéogu had PLENTY of reasons for his hatreds and his fears – but that doesn’t mean that they were much more enjoyable to listen to than they were to experience. Less traumatic, certainly, but awful in an entirely different way.

But Like Thunder takes place AFTER the events of Shadow Speaker. (This is also a hint that neither book stands on its own) Whiny thirteen becomes traumatized fifteen with more experience, a bit more closure for some of the worst parts, a bit more distance from terrible betrayals – and his voice drops. (This last bit, of course, doesn’t matter if you’re reading the text and hearing your own voice in your head, but matters a lot in audio.)

Dikéogu’s life experience, particularly after he was sold into slavery by his own uncle at the age of twelve, have taught him that the world is pain and strife and that he has to defend himself at all times and that people will believe ANYTHING if it allows them to stay comfortable and maintain their illusions and their prejudices.

He learned that last bit from his parents, Felecia and Chika Obidimkpa, the power couple of THE West African multimedia empire. They betrayed him into slavery, they betrayed him by pretending he was dead, they betray him every single time they broadcast a program filled with ridiculous nostalgia for a past that never was and disallows and disavows Dikéogu’s existence as a stormbringer, a ‘Changed One’ with powers granted by the ‘Great Change’ they hate so much.

It’s no surprise that his parents are in league with his enemies.

What is a surprise, especially to Dikéogu, is how much of his story, how much of his trauma and how many of his tragedies, are directly traceable to that first betrayal AND his inability to deal with its consequences to himself and the magic he carries.

So, very much on the one hand, Like Thunder is a save the world quest with a surprising twist at its end. A twist at least partly manufactured, and certainly cackled over, by the Desert Magician. And absolutely on the other hand, it’s a story about a young man learning to live with the person he has become – and very nearly failing the test. ALL the tests.

Whichever way you look at it, it is compelling and captivating from the first page – or from the opening words – until the very last line of the Desert Magician congratulating themself on a tale well told and a heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful message delivered.

Review: Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Valdemar by Mercedes LackeyValdemar (The Founding of Valdemar #3) by Mercedes Lackey
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: The Founding of Valdemar #3, Valdemar (Publication order) #58, Valdemar (Chronological) #6
Pages: 368
Published by DAW on December 26, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The long-awaited story of the founding of Valdemar comes to life in this 3rd book of a trilogy from a New York Times bestselling author and beloved fantasist.
The refugees from the Empire have established a thriving city called Haven with the help of the Tayledras and their allies. But the Tayledras have begun a slow withdrawal to the dangerous lands known as the Pelagirs, leaving the humans of Haven to find their own way.
But even with Haven settled, the lands around Haven are not without danger. Most of the danger comes in the form of magicians: magicians taking advantage of the abundant magical energy in the lands the Tayledras have cleansed; magicians who have no compunction about allying themselves with dark powers and enslaving magical beasts and the Elementals themselves.
Kordas, his family, and his people will need all the help they can get. But when a prayer to every god he has ever heard of brings Kordas a very specific and unexpected form of help, the new kingdom of Valdemar is set on a path like nothing else the world has ever seen.
Perfect for longtime fans of Valdemar or readers diving into the world for the first time, the Founding of Valdemar trilogy will delight and enchant readers with the origin story of this beloved fantasy realm.

My Review:

This final book in the Founding of Valdemar trilogy is the one that every fan of the series, both new and old, has been waiting for, not just since the first book in this trilogy, Beyond, came out in 2021, but frankly since the very first book in the very first series, Arrows of the Queen, was published back in 1987.

Because we finally get to see the advent of the beautiful, intelligent, beacons of light and conscience that have kept Valdemar the marvelous and marvelously liveable country it has been since that first book nearly 40 years ago.

It wouldn’t be Valdemar without the Companions, and it wouldn’t have been fair to title this book Valdemar unless it really was Valdemar as it should be. Fair however is very fair indeed, and Kordas Valdemar’s prayers (and ours), are answered.

That the Companions appear in the midst of a reluctant King Valdemar’s dark night of the soul is not a surprise when we get there. One of the things that has made Kordas such a terrific character to follow is that he thinks deeply, feels much and fears often that even if he is doing his best it just isn’t enough.

And he’s not wrong. His kingdom has barely begun. He’s a good man who has done his best but he’s made a few mistakes, as humans do. He’s seen the depths to which an empire and its rulers can sink in the Eastern Empire that he and his people fled from. He’s discovered tiny seeds of those same privileged attitudes in some of his own people, including his younger son.

He fears, rightly so, that no matter how good and fair and just a legacy he leaves, both in the laws being created and the standard of behavior he exhibits, that over time his descendants will fall prey to the same forces that eventually brought the empire to destruction.

So he hopes and he prays and he cries out for a way to keep his kingdom in the light. And he’s answered by the Powers with the galloping hooves of the first Companions.

Now he just has to figure out what comes next. For himself, for his heir, for his kingdom and for his people.

As an implacable enemy marches towards his borders.

Escape Rating A: Valdemar has always been a bit of an anomaly as far as fantasy worlds go. Most epic fantasies are set at times and in places that are in so much turmoil that that are just no nice places to visit and you really wouldn’t want to live there. There are a few exceptions, like Pern, Celta and Harmony, but for the most part, by the time that an epic fantasy series gets written about a place – or epic space opera or a combination thereof – the situation has gotten so FUBAR that liveability is a long way off even by the series’ end.

Which, in a way, means that the Valdemar series, at least the books that are set after the Founding of Valdemar, were cozy fantasy before it was cool. All the problems are human-scale even when they’re not precisely human-shaped, and those problems are not entrenched because the Companions keep them from reaching that point at least within Valdemar’s borders.

The Founding of Valdemar series has been the story of how Valdemar got to be that liveable place we’ve come to know and love, and it’s a humdinger of a start.

Things are never easy. At this point in the Kingdom’s history, they’re barely ten years into what will be a long and storied future. But the situation is neither long nor storied yet. They’re still at the point where the traditions that will sustain them haven’t been created, let alone settled, and Valdemar, both the person and the kingdom, are still figuring out how things are going to go.

Which means that a chunk of the story is involved with literally how the sausage of government gets made, as they have very little to go by. So the rules are being created as a combination of what the Duchy of Valdemar used to do that was good, not doing the things that the Eastern Empire did that were bad, and altering those ideas to fit their new circumstances.

It is generally a two-steps forward, one-step back proposition. We know that sausage is going to be fairly tasty by the time it reaches Queen Selenay in Arrows of the Queen, but making it is hard and frustrating work.

Work that’s hindered by nobles who think that normal means they can go back to some of their more self-indulgent ways, while it’s helped by those who have grown up in the new ways of doing things, like Crown Prince Restil has, and who are now adults and can pick up some of the reins of their own power.

And of course there’s an external threat on the horizon, and much of the action of this entry in the series shows how all those plans and new procedures both help and hinder the preparations for what they hope will be a small-scale war. Emphasis on small with fears focused on war.

To make a long but still beloved story short, Valdemar is a lot of fun to read, especially if you enjoy books where intelligent and competent people do their level best to make good things happen. If you liked L.E. Modesitt’s Imager Portfolio, The Founding of Valdemar trilogy has the same feel to it as that series did after Scholar.

If you read Valdemar back in the day but not recently, Beyond is a great place to get back into the series as it is so “foundational” to what happened later that you don’t need to remember what happened later to get back in there. I would not recommend starting here with Valdemar, as this is very definitely an ending of a chapter, even if it is a beginning for everything we already know.

One final note, and it’s a bit of a trigger warning. As part of the monumental events that bring the Companions to Valdemar, the mages’ beloved, and surprisingly long-lived cat, Sydney-You-Asshole – and yes, that moniker is the cat’s name and he’s EARNED it over the course of this series – choses to go off into the woods on his last journey in the moment the Companions arrive.

The tributes to Sydney-You-Asshole’s death were many and heartfelt, particularly deeply touching to the heart of any reader who has a beloved companion animal that is gone. There is still dust in this review as I write about it – so be prepared.

However, considering that the method of Sydney’s passing was to leave his friends and family as the gate to the Powers was open, I have to wonder if he didn’t turn out to be the archetype for the Firecats of Vkandis. Not that Sydney was a flame point – he was, in fact, a void – but learning at some later point that his attitude was passed down in some fashion to the firecats would not be a surprise. At all. Sydney-You-Asshole certainly had all the cattitude required to become the progenitor of a god’s avatar – but then again, most cats do.

Returning to Valdemar through this Founding series has been a joy and a delight, and has provided the opportunity to slip back into a series that I’ve always loved. Which means I have yet more trips to Valdemar to look forward to, starting with Gryphon’s Valor, the forthcoming follow up to this year’s marvelous Gryphon in Light.

Review: Anything with Nothing edited by Mercedes Lackey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Anything with Nothing edited by Mercedes LackeyAnything With Nothing (Tales of Valdemar #17) by Mercedes Lackey
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: anthologies, epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Tales of Valdemar #17, Valdemar (Publication order) #57
Pages: 368
Published by DAW on November 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This 17th anthology of short stories set in the beloved Valdemar high fantasy universe features tales by debut and established authors and a brand-new story from Mercedes Lackey.
The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages—and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. These inborn talents—combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more—make them indispensable to their monarch and realm.
Sought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.
Join a variety of authors as they ride with Mercedes Lackey to the beloved land of Valdemar and experience the many facets of this storied high fantasy realm.

My Review:

A huge part of the charm of the Valdemar series is that, after so many years of chronicles, the world is large in scope, both in geography and in history, and there are plenty of times and places in which to set stories about how it came to be, what makes it tick – and the times and places when, in spite of everyone’s best efforts – situations have gone off the rails.

At the same time, it seems like a relatively livable place, allowing for stories where humans – with or without the help of magical, horse-like Companions – manage to fix what’s gone wrong or at least make a good stab at.

Or, when necessary, a good stab at whoever has done the wrong.

The stories in this SEVENTEENTH collection of Tales of Valdemar cast a wide net over Valdemar’s history, from not long after the Founding we’ve seen in the new Founding of Valdemar trilogy, all the way up to Selenay’s time, while geographically the stories spread across Valdemar and into the borderlands with Hardorn and Karse – if not just a bit over.

And it’s an absolute delight from beginning to end for anyone who has ever spent time in Valdemar, whether they’ve been visiting from the very beginning, back in Arrows of the Queen, just discovered Valdemar with the marvelous Founding of Valdemar trilogy (Beyond, Into the West, and the upcoming Valdemar) or who have dipped in here and there and then over the years.

Anything with Nothing, both the collection and the specific story by Lackey herself that closes out this collection, turned out to be the perfect way to get familiar with this world, once again, in preparation for discovering the final pieces of how Valdemar came to be in the soon-to-be-released book of the same title, Valdemar.

Escape Rating A-: The previous Tales of Valdemar collection, Shenanigans, featured stories that were all centered around the title theme, meaning that in one way or another they all featured tricks or pranks.

Likewise, the stories in this collection all center around the theme of making do or doing without, of persevering in the face of not having nearly enough. In other words, about creating pretty much anything out of not very much at all.

My favorite story in this collection is “Look to Your Houses” by Fiona Patton. It’s a slice of life story, as many of the stories in these collections often turn out to be, but in this case it’s the slice of a particular life, that of a City Guardhouse Sergeant caught between the rock of how things are supposed to be done and the hard place of how things actually get done when he’s forced to reconcile those two frequently opposing states of being in preparation for a new commander’s assignment to his station. The way that particular dilemma was handled, and the dichotomy between the rules and real life, gave me vibes of Sam Vimes and the City Watch in the Discworld. This story could have just as easily been part of the Discworld  City Watch subseries and it would have fit right in.

My favorite purely Valdemar story turned out to be the title story, “Anything, with Nothing” by Mercedes Lackey, for the way that the town comes together, the way that Herald Tadeus steps up, the way that his Companion manages to insert her own bit of shenanigans AND the way that the mercenaries got completely flummoxed by a ‘Ghost Squad’ of well-led villagers and the instant communication that Companions make possible.

Many of the stories in this collection take place either as magic was fading or after it was already gone. In other words, in the run up to the Last Herald Mage trilogy and in the centuries after of managing without the big, flashy magic gifts.

Quite a few of the stories center around characters who, because of that lack of magic, have more than a bit of imposter syndrome, as Herald Tad does in “Anything, with Nothing”. Those stories include “In Memory’s Vault” by Kristin Schwengel, “Warp and Weft” by Diana Paxson, “Enough” by Louisa Swann, “Wooden Horses” by Rosemary Edghill, “Intrigue in Althor” by Jeanne Adams, and “Old Wounds” by Terry O’Brien.

Even though the purpose of the Companions is to help keep Valdemar on the straight and narrow, to keep it working for most of its people most of the time, humans are still gonna human, especially when they believe they are away from the eyes and eyes of the Companions and their Heralds.

Meaning that several stories focus on the problems that result when, as the old saying goes, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” regardless of whether that power is ‘might makes right’ or ‘they who have the gold make the rules’ or the power of social opprobrium and the morality police.

Those stories include “Good Intentions” by Stephanie D. Shaver, “Beebalm and Bergamot” by Cat Rambo, and “What a Chosen Family Chooses” by Dee Shull.

There are also several stories about folks have either fallen into hard times or onto mean streets, both in Haven and outside it, or have otherwise been abused by the system in general, their fellow humans in particular, or a bit of both. “A Day’s Work” by Charlotte E. English and “Wooden Horses” by Rosemary Edghill are both particularly heartbreaking in this regard.

Last but not least, there are several marvelous stories in this collection that would have been equally at home in Never Too Old to Save the World, that marvelous collection of fantasy and SF stories that feature protagonists who become the ‘Chosen One’ in middle age or later. I particularly want to give a shoutout to four of these stories, “Needs Must When Evil Bides” by Jennifer Brozek, “What You Know How to See” by Dayle A. Dermatitis, “Warp and Weft” by Diana Paxson, and “Once a Bandit” by Brigid Collins.

While I haven’t listed every story in this collection, I did absolutely enjoy them all. And I’m aware that I’ve mentioned a few of the stories more than once, which hopefully gives you the idea that I liked them a LOT, because I absolutely did – even the ones that went to the darkest places and broke my heart.

So, if you’ve missed Valdemar the place and are looking for something to tide you over until Valdemar the final book in the Founding of Valdemar trilogy comes out between Christmas and New Year’s, I highly recommend picking up Anything with Nothing to get you in the mood for that truly epic story coming SOON!

Review: Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: Shadow Speaker by Nnedi OkoraforShadow Speaker (The Desert Magician's Duology, #1) by Nnedi Okorafor
Narrator: Délé Ogundiran
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: African Futurism, climate fiction, fantasy, science fiction
Series: Desert Magician's Duology #1
Pages: 336
Length: 10 hrs 28 mins
Published by DAW, Tantor Audio on September 26, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Niger, West Africa, 2074
It is an era of tainted technology and mysterious mysticism. A great change has happened all over the planet, and the laws of physics aren’t what they used to be.
Within all this, I introduce you to Ejii Ugabe, a child of the worst type of politician. Back when she was nine years old, she was there as her father met his end. Don’t waste your tears on him: this girl’s father would throw anyone under a bus to gain power. He was a cruel, cruel man, but even so, Ejii did not rejoice at his departure from the world. Children are still learning that some people don’t deserve their love.
Now 15 years old and manifesting the abilities given to her by the strange Earth, Ejii decides to go after the killer of her father. Is it for revenge or something else? You will have to find out by reading this book.
I am the Desert Magician, and this is a novel I have conjured for you, so I’m certainly not going to just tell you here.

My Review:

Peace bombs. A phrase that only makes sense in the context of the future history of the world that leads to this story, as told by the chaotic trickster the Desert Magician about the coming of age of the titular Shadow Speaker, Ejii Ugabe, and her friend, the rainmaker Dikéogu Obidimkpa. It’s their story, but the Desert Magician is the one bringing it to us. Also messing with them and it at the same time.

The Desert Magician is not exactly a reliable narrator – but then trickster avatars seldom are. After all, the story is more fun for them if they get to mess with the protagonists a bit. More than a bit. As much as they want.

As Ejii describes the world in which she grew up, the Earth as it exists after the ‘Great Change’ brought about by those Peace Bombs, it’s not hard to think that the event was as much of a eucatastrophe as it was the regular kind. A whole lot of things seem to be better. More chaotic, but better. Certainly the climate has improved, even if entire forests sometimes spring up overnight, while the technology imported from other, more advanced worlds has made living with the remaining extremes considerably easier.

None of which means that humans are any better at all. Whatsoever. Because humans are gonna human. But it does mean that there are more possibilities, both in the sense of seemingly magical powers and animals, and in the sense of more opportunities for more people to rise above their circumstances – even if some people are still determined to fall into the traps laid by theirs.

Which leads the Desert Magician to Ejii’s story, and leads Ejii to Jaa, the great general who swept into Ejii’s village of Kwàmfà and struck off her father’s head with her sword, setting Jaa and Ejii on a collision course that will either save the world – or end it.

Shadow speaking, the ability to hear the voices of the spirits, is one of the many gifts that have arisen after the Great Change. Ejii is the shadow speaker of the title, and at fifteen is just coming into her power. A power that is telling her to follow Jaa to a great meeting of the leaders of the worlds that have merged into one interconnected system as a result of the change.

Jaa is going to the meeting to start a war in the hopes of preventing worse to come. Ejii has been tasked with finding a way to make peace. Neither task is going to be easy – and only one of them is right. The question is, which one?

Escape Rating A-: This version of Shadow Speaker is an expanded edition of one of the author’s out-of-print early novels. The original version of which, also titled Shadow Speaker, was a winner or finalist for several genre awards in the year it was published, as a young adult novel. Which it still both is and isn’t.

It is, on the one hand, aimed at a young adult audience because its protagonists are themselves in that age range, being merely fifteen when the story begins. As a consequence of their age, both Ejii and Dikéogu clearly still have a lot of growing up ahead of them in spite of the life-changing and even world-altering experiences that have led them to undertake this journey.

At the same time, Ejii at least is very much on the cusp of adulthood, and this is a journey that forces her to make adult decisions about, with no sense of hyperbole whatsoever, the state of the world. Howsomever, a good chunk of what she brings to those decisions has the flavor of the naivete of youth, particularly in the sense that the world SHOULD be fair, people SHOULD do the right thing, and that if only people would communicate honestly a peaceful solution SHOULD be within reach.

It’s not that she doesn’t know the world and the people in it are often stupid, self-centered, greedy and downright mean, it’s that she hasn’t yet been jaded enough by her experiences to truly believe that there can’t be a better way. Even though her personal experiences thus far in her life have seldom shown it to her.

Dikéogu is not nearly as mature as Ejii is. He whines a LOT. Not that his complaints aren’t justified, but it’s so very clear that he still has a lot of growing up to do and that expresses itself in a kind of ‘pity poor me’ whining that gets hard to take – particularly in audio as he’s voiced in a higher pitch to distinguish his speech from Ejii’s. Which works very well indeed as characterization while driving me personally nuts as I find high-pitched voices jarring. (I recognize this is a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing, but if it is also a ‘you’ thing, you have been warned.)

While the Desert Magician is presenting this story, he’s not an omnipresent presenter. We see the story through Ejii’s perspective except at the very beginning and end. She is the person we follow, although the story is not told from inside her head. Rather, the story unfolds around her and her actions, and we only see what she sees and know what she knows and get as confused as she does at what she doesn’t.

Which means that while the narrator, Délé Ogundiran, does an excellent job of standing in as Ejii’s voice, that may not be true for the second book in the duology, which will be Dikéogu’s story. Hopefully by the point in Dikéogu’s life when that story takes place, his voice will have dropped.

As much as Ejii comes of age and into her power through her riveting adventures in Shadow Speaker, her world and all the worlds that have become interconnected as a result of the ‘Great Merge’ that was part and parcel of Earth’s ‘Great Change’ also have a great deal of maturing to do – or at least negotiations towards that goal – as this first story ends. Whether the merged worlds will survive that change or destroy each other is part of the subsequent story in this duology that I’m really looking forward to seeing. Or hopefully hearing.

Dikéogu’s story may have started here but his true coming-of-age-and-into-power story, Like Thunder, is coming just after Thanksgiving. And I’ll be very grateful to read it – or hopefully have it read to me like Shadow Speaker – over the holidays.

Review: A Study in Sable by Mercedes Lackey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Study in Sable by Mercedes LackeyA Study in Sable (Elemental Masters #11) by Mercedes Lackey
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Elemental Masters #11
Pages: 313
Published by DAW on June 7th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Psychic Nan Killian and Medium Sarah Lyon-White—along with their clever birds, the raven Neville and the parrot Grey—have been agents of Lord Alderscroft, the Elemental Fire Master known as the Wizard of London, since leaving school. Now, Lord Alderscroft assigns them another commission: to work with the famous man living at 221 Baker Street—but not the one in flat B. They are to assist the man living in flat C. Dr. John Watson and his wife Mary, themselves Elemental Masters of Water and Air, take the occult cases John’s more famous friend disdains, and they will need every skill the girls and their birds can muster!

Nan and Sarah’s first task: to confront and eliminate the mysterious and deadly entity that nearly killed them as children: the infamous Haunt of Number 10 Berkeley Square. But the next task divides the girls for the first time since they were children. A German opera star begs Sarah for help, seeking a Medium’s aid against not just a single spirit, but a multitude. As Sarah becomes more deeply entwined with the Prima Donna, Nan continues to assist John and Mary Watson alone, only to discover that Sarah’s case is far more sinister than it seems. It threatens to destroy not only a lifelong friendship, but much, much more.

My Review:

I read A Study in Sable AFTER I finished A Scandal in Battersea. That’s definitely the wrong order. But A Scandal in Battersea served as a marvelous reintroduction for this reader to the Elemental Masters series. So marvelous, in fact, that when I closed that book I grabbed as much of the series as I could from various libraries and immediately started on A Study in Sable, order be damned.

I’m very glad I did.

With the exception of the villains, the cast of characters is the same between the two books. Our heroines are the psychic Nan Killian, Sarah Lyon-White the medium, their extremely intelligent and protective birds, and the famous Dr. John Watson and his wife Mary, elemental masters of water and air, respectively.

And as deeply involved as ever in the life and casework of that most rational of men, Sherlock Holmes.

Just as in A Scandal in Battersea, the focus here is on the magic that functions in this slightly alternative version of our own world. But as in Scandal, a case that at first seems to rest entirely in the magical realm that Holmes refuses to believe exists, turns out to have so many potential effects on his rational universe that he finds himself involved in spite of himself.

Such is the case of A Study in Sable. A celebrated German opera singer – definitely not Irene Adler – is under siege by hordes of ghosts while she performs in London. She hires Sarah for her mediumistic talents, but unlike most of the people who hire either Sarah or Nan, makes it clear that ONLY Sarah’s presence is welcome, and that Nan is something less than the mud she scrapes off her expensive boots.

At first, Sarah is happy for the money, and feels duty bound to help the spirits “cross over”, but looks forward to the end of her task. But as the horde of ghosts seems to be nowhere near diminishing, Nan and Sarah’s bird Grey discern that Sarah seems to be falling under the sway of the opera singer, in a way that is not natural.

As Sarah’s natural enjoyment of the luxurious setting morphs into a kind of desperate, personality-altering hero-worship, Nan moved from being mildly jealous to seriously alarmed – and that is the point where the Watsons, and eventually Holmes, are drawn in.

The question is whether even their combined powers will be enough to draw Sarah out from under the spell before it is too late.

Escape Rating A-: I had every bit as much fun with this one as with A Scandal in Battersea. However, if you are coming to these fresh, start with Sable. The two stories flow together extremely well when read in the correct order.

Although there are no steampunk elements in these books, the way that this alternate Victorian and early 20th century England seems to function, along with its blend of magic and “normal” life, reminds me even more strongly of Cindy Spencer Pape’s excellent – but seemingly complete – Gaslight Chronicles.

But the story in A Study in Sable rests very much on the strength of its characters – particularly in this case the character of Nan Killian. She and Sarah are independent young women, who are partners in their independence but not romantic partners. At the same time, romance seems to be far from either of their current horizons. And I like that – that these young women are making identities for themselves and neither expecting nor even thinking that romance will solve things for them.

This book is particularly Nan’s show, as Sarah is increasingly not herself as the story progresses. We feel for Nan as she watches in horror as the friendship that has sustained both her and Sarah unravels under the influence of the supernaturally charismatic opera singer.

It is also fun to see a version of Dr. John Watson where he is definitely Holmes’ equal. Their spheres of talent and influence are different, but Watson in this series is a master in his own right, and never kowtows to the sometimes imperious and always self-absorbed Holmes.

The case in Sable is one where Holmes’ seemingly mundane missing persons’ case draws inevitably towards Watson’s case of malign psychic influence and Sarah’s never-ending ghostly horde. When the separate strands merge, the whole story makes wonderfully blinding sense.

I’m very glad I decided to delve into the world of the Elemental Masters. I’ll be back!

Review: Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Heroine Complex by Sarah KuhnHeroine Complex (Heroine Complex, #1) by Sarah Kuhn
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Heroine Complex #1
Pages: 378
Published by DAW on July 5th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Being a superheroine is hard. Working for one is even harder.
Evie Tanaka is the put-upon personal assistant to Aveda Jupiter, her childhood best friend and San Francisco's most beloved superheroine. She's great at her job—blending into the background, handling her boss's epic diva tantrums, and getting demon blood out of leather pants.
Unfortunately, she's not nearly as together when it comes to running her own life, standing up for herself, or raising her tempestuous teenage sister, Bea.
But everything changes when Evie's forced to pose as her glamorous boss for one night, and her darkest comes out: she has powers, too. Now it's up to her to contend with murderous cupcakes, nosy gossip bloggers, and supernatural karaoke battles—all while juggling unexpected romance and Aveda's increasingly outrageous demands. And when a larger threat emerges, Evie must finally take charge and become a superheroine in her own right... or see her city fall to a full-on demonic invasion.

My Review:

I read Heroine Complex on my way to Worldcon. What could be more appropriate than reading a book about superheroes on my way to a science fiction convention? And it was even better, because it was a book about superheroines!

One question that superhero origin stories always have to answer is: how did it happen? As far as we know there are no super-powered beings in our current world, so some explanation needs to be provided to ground what makes this world different.

In this case, it’s a demon invasion from another universe that hits San Francisco. When the portal explosively opens between the demon world and ours, some people near Ground Zero immediately discover that they have acquired some minor superpowers. There doesn’t seem to be anything major, just some telekinesis, or a bit of GPS enhancement.

(Someone needs to explain to me why it’s always either San Francisco or New Orleans. Those two cities seem to be the hot spots for everything other-worldly)

But one woman rises above all others: Aveda Jupiter. Not because her minor telekinesis is all that hot, but because she just plain wants to be a “real” superhero way more than anyone could possibly imagine. So she works at it. Partly, she pulls a Batman – she just works her body until she is incredibly fit and surprisingly strong for her size.

She also works social media. Every time she takes down one of the continuing minor demon invasions, her team of assistants makes sure that every super-moment is live streamed to Aveda Jupiter super-fans worldwide.

Although there is a bit of a team, most of Team Aveda’s work falls on one much put upon personal assistant, Evie Tanaka. If there is one thing that Evie is good at, it is taking care of all of Aveda Jupiter’s shit, including the shit she doles out to her close friends and supporters every minute the camera is off.

Aveda Jupiter is a super diva, and Evie is the person who takes care of her, no matter how super demanding or super obnoxious she gets.

220px-TheHeroicTrioBecause way back when Evie Tanaka and Annie Chang were girls watching Michelle Yeoh in the Hong Kong fantasy adventure superhero movie The Heroic Trio (this movie really does exist – see poster at left) Annie was Evie’s superhero. The brave and outgoing Annie always stood up for the shy and retiring Evie, not matter what the circumstances, so when Annie used the demon invasion to morph herself into Aveda Jupiter, Evie was right there for her.

But just as Annie kept all Evie’s secrets when they were girls, she’s keeping a big one for Evie now that they are both young women. The difference is that Annie, while she has always been the leader of their friendship, now thinks more about her image as Aveda Jupiter than she does about what got her where she is.

And Aveda Jupiter has accustomed herself to being the center of her new universe, so when she needs something she expects everyone to provide. Especially her long-suffering friend Evie, no matter what the cost might be to Evie herself.

When Aveda needs a stand-in, she doesn’t just ask Evie to step out of her comfort zone, she demands it. And Evie, used to giving in to Aveda at every point, steps way out of her safe place in the shadows to stand front and center as a pretend Aveda Jupiter.

Until it all stops being pretend and Evie has to become the superhero she’s been hiding all along.

Escape Rating B+: This story is a whole lot of fun, especially if you like urban fantasy in general, or superhero books in particular. Evie and Annie are interesting superheroines, and not just because they are among the very few Asian American women who take on that role.

But the beginning of the story makes for a bit of uncomfortable reading. Aveda Jupiter is a bitch, and she treats Evie, her best friend from childhood, like dirt. Aveda’s diva-esque tantrums are nasty, and as a reader one can’t help but wonder why Evie keeps taking her shit. Most of us would have bailed long ago.

It feels good when Evie starts standing up for herself, but her first steps on that journey are just a bit painful. We end up wanting Aveda to get taken down a peg or six long before it finally happens.

Built into this story is a hilarious but insightful takedown of the power and pitfalls of social media. The way that this story both builds up the power of social media and shows how easily it can turn one of its former darlings into virtual roadkill is fascinating to watch.

While the nature of the secret that Evie is hiding seems almost transparent from very early on, it’s the story of how Evie really comes into her own that makes this fun. That Aveda gets to see what a monster she’s turned into is icing on a fun cake.

That there turn out to be real monsters just made the story that much more fun, and made it fit perfectly within the comic book universe from which it deftly springs. If you like humor and a bit of humble pie with your superheroes, this book is a treat.