I didn’t buy any books this week. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t buy ANYTHING, just not books. The season premieres for TV are staggering out of the gate, so I finally have new episodes of NCIS, NCIS:LA (and the amazingly fun NCIS: New Orleans) to watch.) One of the best things about streaming TV shows is NO COMMERCIALS. And we can watch whenever we want.
I don’t know why it makes me feel better when I get to the end of the week and only have a short stack; I already have so many books to read that I probably won’t finish in my lifetime.
Hello, my name is Marlene and I’m a biblioholic.
Speaking of things I’m looking forward to getting around to, Humble Bundle has yet another book bundle, and this time it’s Star Trek comics. If you like Trek, it’s definitely worth checking out.
Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive’s survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw but her courage and strength are an asset. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect pollen. She also finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous.
But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all—daring to challenge the Queen’s fertility—enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, her society—and lead her to unthinkable deeds.
My Review:
I’m not so sure about the comparison in the blurb to either (or both) The Handmaid’s Taleand The Hunger Games, but if it gets people to read this marvelous book, well, it’s done its job.
The Bees is the story of a rigorously structured society where the obedient survive, everyone has their own place, and deviation, or even curiosity, is usually rewarded with death. And while the author sets the story in a beehive, among, naturally, bees, she’s really talking about us.
People.
Of course, Flora 717 and the other bees in her hive think of themselves as people, too. Everyone else that impinges on their world is either an enemy or a myth. Occasionally both.
Flora 717 is different from the other bees in her hive, who are all her sisters, daughters of the Queen, except for the very few male drones. More on them in a bit.
In a hive, only the Queen can breed. For Flora 717, it is both law and religion, and rigorously enforced by mind-numbing scent trails as well as power-hungry priestesses and ruthless Fertility Police. Flora 717 bumps and bumbles her rather large way into every rule and precept of her restrictive hive.
The hive is a place where the needs of the many are paramount, and the needs of the few or of the one have no meaning at all. There is only supposed to be the hive, and service to it.
Flora 717, as our point of view character, is different from her sisters. Something either went right or wrong in her creation, and she is larger than her sisters, and also more capable. Floras are the lowest of the low, they are the sanitation workers of the hive. They aren’t supposed to think, they aren’t supposed to be able to talk, and they are not supposed to be capable of ANY of the higher functions of the hive.
Flora 717 can not only talk, but she can sense the hive mind directly. She also has the capacity to feed the larvae in the nursery, and she is strong enough to fly out of the hive and forage for food.
The hive is in danger. Not just from possible direct attacks, but also from the changing world outside. Pollution reduces their foraging grounds. Rain makes it impossible for the foragers to even go out and find food. Life in the hive is changing, and not for the better.
As Flora 717 finds herself the object of an experiment (and not killed out of hand as an outlier) she is able to view all of the strata of life in the hive, from her lowly roots as a sanitation worker, to the dangerous and desperate freedom of the foragers.
She even briefly ascends to the heights of attending the Queen.
All of the knowledge and experience she gains makes her a leader among her own lowly Flora sisterhood. And gives her the courage to foment her own, quiet and inexorable, rebellion.
Escape Rating A: The way that the author portrays the hive’s institutions works well both as an explanation of bee behavior and as an ironic send-up of human behavior. The priestesses exploit their religious positions to accumulate power. The fertility police are brute enforcers and thugs.
And the drones, “Their Malenesses” are both funny and tragic. Their purpose in life is to die for the good of the hive. Or some other hive. But until their last, tragic flight to create a queen, they are indulged in their every whim, and their very essence makes the female bees swoon at every turn.
Yet their self-indulgence is so often their undoing, as well as the hive’s.
You wouldn’t think that you could be absolutely riveted by the supposedly proscribed (and short) life of a bee. But the story so cleverly couches real (and bloodthirsty) life in a hive into human terms that we can’t help but root for Flora 717 to survive and find a destiny that seems to be outside the proscriptions.
It both is and isn’t, in the end, but the way that it works provokes satisfaction, the sense that things change, but that it is part of the greater whole. Which for Flora 717, turns out to be as it should be.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.
After I read The Hexed this week, I realized how much I’d been missing by not getting into Graham’s Krewe of Hunters series. So I started picking them up everywhere. I think the series is going to be my next binge-reading. The Hexed was just so much chilling fun!
Not that I didn’t pick up a few other titles this week, as usual…
The flavor text of the week is family. We’re back East again, visiting Galen’s family this time. Also inspiring his guest post yesterday about Silly Cat Books, complete with picture of one very silly cat. (We miss our girls, even as we worry what they are destroying in our absence!)
One of this week’s tour books, 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas, is set in Philadelphia. We’re not far from there, but I think the book’s Philly is a bit more magical than the real version.
Kara is a mercenary – a Diamond warrior, the best of the best, part of the Majat Guild. When her tenure to Prince Kythar comes to an end, he wishes to retain her services, but must accompany her back to her Guild to negotiate her continued protection.
When they arrive they discover that the prince’s sworn enemy, the Kaddim, have already paid the Guild to engage her services – to capture and hand over the prince (who she has grown very fond of).
A warrior brought up to respect both duty and honour, what happens when her sworn duty proves dishonourable?
My Review:
Blades of the Old Empire is the start of a damn fine epic fantasy series. It reminds me a bit of what has come before (more on that later) but it certainly hits the ground running.
Seeing a title like “Blades of the Old Empire” makes the reader think that old heroes, or possibly heroes of old or heroes like in the old tales, are going to come and rescue the empire. Or maybe the emperor. Throw that set of assumptions out the window.
In this case, those blades from that old empire are evil reincarnated warriors and their old empire was a horrifying tyranny. Everyone thinks that the remnants of those sorcerers are long dead, but as they good guys discover in this first book in the series, they are wrong. Dead wrong.
The Kaddim Brotherhood is back, and they are more evil than ever. Also much better at infiltrating the good guys’ strongholds and institutions.
The action splits between two centers in this story, Good King Evan and his heir, Kyth. (One of the great things about this series so far is that the king doesn’t have to die for his heir to come into his powers.)
King Evan is off to gain followers for his movement to strike down the laws against magic that would keep Kyth from inheriting the throne. Kyth goes on his own separate quest to gain followers among the Forest Dwellers, including their powerful foreseer and the powerful and ancient Lady of the Forest.
Evan gets captured, and Kyth spends most of the book on the run. But they both find themselves head to head with the evil Kaddim, as the forces of darkness begin to expose their long campaign to re-take the empire that once was theirs.
In the middle of all the plots and counterplots are the Majat, the assassins’ guild for which the series is named.
The Majat as a group are expensively mercenary, fearsomely well-trained, and supposed to be completely uninvolved with politics. The guild accepts any contract that pays. The Kaddim exploit that famous neutrality to grievous results.
They turn the only force capable of stopping them in upon itself, as the best assassins are forced into contracts against each other, supposedly in order to protect the reputation of the guild.
Instead, they begin to rebel, which only feeds into the plans of evil. Even as they figure out why they are sent, the manipulation of events continues at higher and higher levels.
Only Kyth is capable of resisting the evil magic. So the sorcerers use the Majat to compromise his heart instead.
Escape Rating A-: True confession, I was supposed to read Blades of the Old Empire in time to do a joint review with E over at The Book Pushers, and couldn’t quite squeeze it in. Today, we’re reviewing the second book in The Majat Code, The Guild of Assassins, so I had to finish the first book first. And it was pretty damn awesome.
The story has a sense that readers have been dropped into the middle; some events are possible only because of things that have happened to the characters in a time before the story begins. It gave me the feeling that there must be another book before this one, but if there is, I can’t find it.
Still the story of Kyth’s first meeting with the Forest People would make an interesting story, based on the hints we get.
While this isn’t a quest story, it is definitely the tale of a young man and his friends coming into their powers and their adulthood. Kyth’s companions, Alder and Ellah, clearly have important parts to play in putting things right.
Something about Kyth and the way that his story is set up reminded me of Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera. Kyth made me think of Tavi, in the way that his magic is unknown and suppressed and coming out to save the situation.
That the church has suppressed magic and now has to reap the consequences had many echoes for me. In Katherine Kurtz’ Deryniseries, and in Jean Johnson’s recent The Guild (reviewed at The Book Pushers). Attempting to remove all the magic users from the population as a means for the church keeping control was bound to have nasty results in the end. I think that point is going to get made over and over. (Insert your own possibly modern-day political parables here)
The manipulation of the assassins’ guild and simply the use of assassins as main characters also struck me as reminiscent of Amy Raby’s Assassin’s Gambit(reviewed here)and Lindsay Buroker’s Emperor’s Edge (first book reviewed here) series. Since these are all stories that I loved, from my perspective they are all excellent antecedents.
As Blades of the Old Empire concludes, the kingdom is still very much in crisis. There are both political and magical ramifications to every act. It also sets the stage for the main focus to switch from the royal party to the assassins Kara and Mai and their defiance of the corruption in the guild.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.
American artist Joseph Hannigan and his alluring sister, Sophie, have arrived in enchanting nineteenth-century Venice with a single-minded goal. The twins, who have fled scandal in New York, are determined to break into Venice’s expatriate set and find a wealthy patron to support Joseph’s work.
But the enigmatic Hannigans are not the only ones with a secret agenda. Joseph’s talent soon attracts the attention of the magnificent Odilé Leon, a celebrated courtesan and muse who has inspired many artists to greatness. But her inspiration comes with a devastatingly steep price.
As Joseph falls under the courtesan’s spell, Sophie joins forces with Nicholas Dane, the one man who knows Odilé’s dark secret, and her sworn enemy. When the seductive muse offers Joseph the path to eternal fame, the twins must decide who to believe—and just how much they are willing to sacrifice for fame.
My Review:
There is a hunger that lurks in the shadows, waiting impatiently to feast on its right and proper prey.
The hunger is monstrous, but is not necessarily evil. It bargains with its victims, and once struck, the bargain is fulfilled to the letter.
In return for providing an already talented artist with the inspiration and the vision to create on masterwork of towering genius, the muse takes, in return, everything that made the artist who he was.
The death that usually follows is not the monster’s fault. The bargain is kept.
There are a number of artistic geniuses, in art, in letters, in music, who produced one final towering masterpiece, and then died or faded. Keats, Byron, Schumann, Vivaldi, Canaletto, Shelley. Great artists who burned out young, whether they died or not.
What if their great inspirations came from a single source, despite the differences in time and place? What if John Keats’ Lamiawas all too real?
The beautiful decay of 19th century Venice is the perfect backdrop for this story of love, corruption and inspiration.
Odile Leon has sold her soul for a chance to be remembered. Quite literally sold her soul. Once every three years, she must find an artistic genius, sung or unsung, and make him a legend. In return for artistic immortality, that artist must sell his own soul to her as his muse.
In Venice, Odile is brought to bay by one man she toyed with but did not consume, and an artist who has already found his muse, in the person of his twin sister.
Nicholas Dane is obsessed with stopping Odile, in the hopes that she will return his poetic talent. Joseph and Sophie Hannigan are bent on outrunning the salacious rumors that follow them, and finding the perfect showcase for Joseph’s magnificent artistic talent.
Odile needs a victim, before it is too late. But her long life has not prepared her to face that it is already too late, not just for her, but for all of those she has drawn into her web.
Escape Rating B: So much of this story operates in the shadows, and those shadows give it its sense of creeping horror and dark need.
In atmosphere, it reminds me a bit of Lauren Owen’s The Quick (reviewed here), but the motivations behind the monstrousness are different. In The Quick, the society only wants to make vampires out of the “right sort” of people, and others are pawns, toys or food. Their complete sort of self-centeredness feels evil on multiple levels.
Although both stories are set in the same era, the monstrousness of Odile is not necessarily evil. Many artists of all types would think their lives were a reasonable trade for otherworldly inspiration and artistic immortality. She offers a bargain, and she keeps it. Admittedly, her victims are often too much in her thrall to refuse.
Odile is a succubus, but a very particular one. She maintains her life by sucking out their talent. In return they live forever, or at least achieve immortal renown.
Nicholas Dane hounds her from city to city, believing that if he prevents her feeding, she will be destroyed. He is both right and wrong, in a way that he pays for dearly. Because Odile fixes her sights on the twin brother of the woman he loves.
And Sophie can’t live without her brother, or vice versa.
The relationship between Sophie and her brother Joseph both fascinates and repels everyone they meet, including Odile and Nicholas. We’re never 100% certain, but readers are intended to find more than a hint of V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic in the Hannigans’ backstory.
It’s obvious that they mean too much to each other, but nothing is ever confirmed. That background becomes part of the rotting decadence of Venice.
The story starts out slowly, and switches between multiple points of view with every chapter. But we still only explore each party’s surface thoughts, and not the secrets they keep from themselves as well as each other.
This story gets darker and darker as it leads to its conclusion. It haunts, and makes you want to brush off lingering traces of the web, both at the same time. The story is definitely a case of atmosphere over action, but I couldn’t go to sleep without finishing it. And had a difficult time sleeping afterwards.
~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~
Megan is giving away a paperback copy of Inamorata to one lucky winner (US/Canada)! To enter, use the Rafflecopter below.
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.
It’s hard to believe that summer is more than half over. Seattle has reached the hot stage, in other words, the point where I bemoan the lack of air conditioning. That homes didn’t have air conditioning made sense in Anchorage, but here, not so much.
Even the cats are refusing to cuddle. It’s obviously way too warm if you have a fur coat that you can’t take off.
Speaking of taking off, we saw Guardians of the Galaxy last night. It is absolutely awesome. Terrifically fun, and the retro sound track is perfect. The villains are more than a bit cardboard cut out, but who really cares? The characters of “our heroes” are marvelous, and Rocket frequently steals the show. Just as he should.
After three long years of war, starkly handsome Wynter Atrialan will have his vengeance on Summerlea’s king by taking one of the man’s beautiful, beloved daughters as his bride. But though peace is finally at hand, Wynter’s battle with the Ice Heart, the dread power he embraced to avenge his brother’s death, rages on.
Khamsin Coruscate, Princess of Summerlea and summoner of Storms, has spent her life exiled to the shadows of her father’s palace. Reviled by her father, marriage to Wintercraig’s icy king was supposed to be a terrible punishment, but instead offers Kham her first taste of freedom—and her first taste of overwhelming passion.
As fierce, indomitable Wynter weathers even Khamsin’s wildest storms, surprising her with a tenderness she never expected, Kham wants more than Wynter’s passion—she yearns for his love. But the power of the Ice Heart is growing, dangerous forces are gathering, and a devastating betrayal puts Khamsin and Wynter to the ultimate test.
My Review:
My friends Has and Lou over at The Book Pushers called The Winter King an “old skool” fantasy romance. After having devoured The Winter King, all 600 pages of it, in less than two days, I’d pretty much agree.
The Winter King reminds me a lot of the big, meaty fantasy romance sagas like Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince series. There’s an epic sweep of magic and hot juicy romance (sometimes a bit literally) set in a world of endlessly warring kingdoms and opposing gods.
It makes for a sprawling story so big you can absolutely wallow in it. In a completely good way. When done well, this kind of storytelling makes for a great big “YUM”, and The Winter King is definitely done well.
We start out with what appears to be one misguided young man’s quest for the legendary sword of his ancestors–up until he makes off with the neighbor king’s fiance and kills the king’s brother as part of his escape plan. Then he disappears from sight for three years, while the aforementioned king sets out to reduce the young man’s rival kingdom to splinters.
And that’s where the real story begins.
Falcon was the Prince of Summerlea, and he stole the King of Winter Craig’s fiancee and a magical artifact that is supposed to point out the location of legendary King Roland’s sword, Blazing.
Wynter, the King of Winter Craig embraces the terrible side of his country’s heritage in order to lay waste to the kingdom that sent Falcon. Three years later he’s conquered the last stronghold, and is prepared to claim his prize.
Wynter intends to injure the King of Summerlea by demanding one of his three beloved daughters as his wife. Instead, Verdan Summerlea gets the upper hand by foisting his definitely unbeloved fourth daughter on the enemy he hates.
He hates his daughter Khamsin enough to beat her very nearly to death in order to get her to participate in this charade. It’s not until half-way through the beating that Kham figures out that the enemy king will give her a better chance of survival than staying at home.
None of the Summerlanders have any clue that giving Kham to Wynter is also his best chance at survival. But there is so much distrust between the two countries, and so much deception involved in all of Kham and Wynter’s initial encounters, that it takes a lot of time, and quite a bit of other people’s blood, before they manage half a rapprochement.
There are too many people invested in keeping them apart. Some with honest mistrust, and many full of deliberate treachery.
Even though they each have nowhere else to turn, it takes despicable betrayal from both sides of their conflict to finally push them toward each other. And it might be too late, not just for Kham and Wynter, but for the entire world.
Escape Rating A-: I have some quibbles, but after absolutely gobbling the story up in a relatively short time, I have to say I had a ball reading it.
Which doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to shake some sense into both the hero and heroine. Frequently.
The tension in the romance was based on several huge misunderstandammits, a trope I generally hate. However, Kham and Wynter were not stuck in a fake conflict that could have been resolved with a simple conversation. They frequently misunderstood each other because their relationship begins as a forced marriage of enemies. Their countries have been at war for three years. Their people don’t trust each other for very good reasons. It’s difficult to clear the air when you aren’t ready to trust the other person.
That being said, Kham is very young and has lived a life of complete isolation. She’s never had to behave in the court setting she should have, and she hasn’t learned the lessons one usually does about guarding your presentation and the way that people behave when they are being spiteful or simply getting along. She’s observed her father’s court in secret, but was never allowed to participate, and for reasons that weren’t her fault. Figuring out how to behave in the real world, and becoming Queen of people who hate and distrust her, was being thrown into the deep end of the pool. She learns, but she flails about a lot and suffers from some self-indulgent self-pity at points early on. She gets better.
Wynter has more life experience, and more real-life experience than Kham does. Admittedly, a lot of it has been horrible, and he’s been forced to take on responsibility early and fast. His life has not been easy. His last fiance betrayed him, so trusting the daughter of his enemy is beyond difficult. At the same time, he seems to not understand that his treatment of Kham will be mirrored by his entire court. Even though he doesn’t trust her, he seems to have totally missed the point that his court needs to respect her as Queen and the potential mother of the next ruler.
One side note, I wish the King of Winter Craig had not been named “Wynter”. It felt just a shade over the top. Totally my 2 cents and YMMV.
The romance between Kham and Wynter is almost too hot to read on a summer night, but in a way that makes sense in their relationship. This is a dynastic marriage, there has to be a child. So the romance is a terrific sex-into-love story. The sparks they strike off of each other in their clash of wills translates directly into steam.
Without going into spoiler territory, I will say that the ending throws a lot of tropes onto their heads. And it’s marvelous.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.
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Coming Next Week:
Escape Rating A-: True confession, I was supposed to read Blades of the Old Empire in time to do a joint 
