book review – Page 27

September 6, 2017

Review – The Exile and the Sorcerer by Jane Fletcher

Genre: fantasy: sword and sorcery

Pairings: f/f

Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual

Warnings: none

Review:

Decent low fantasy with touches of heat.

General
It’s going to be hard to review this one. I absolutely hated the first half of the book. Tevi is just not a compelling protagonist and is very reactive. She seldom if ever has any agency, and basically lets things just happen to her as she drifts aimlessly through her exile. Also frustrating was the lack of through line for the first half. Yes, we have this vague quest, but Tevi doesn’t take it seriously and doesn’t really even think about it until the halfway point, so we the reader are also left thinking the book is just going to be a meandering ‘Tevi reacts to circumstances’ book.

And then we hit a POV shift. And then the book completely turns around.

Jemeryl the sorcerer, while not the most likable of characters overall, has agency. She DOES things. Her backstory is short, concise, and to the point, and for that reason it seems so much easier to get into her head and empathize. The point of the POV switch is also where the through line picks up, and suddenly Tevi’s quest matters, and we have a purpose, and a plot, and a driving force in the book. Also we have the romance between Jemeryl and Tevi which, while short, was steamy in places and well done.

Worldbuilding
I liked the worldbuilding in this book a lot. The towns are well drawn out, the histories feel complete, and the few pages of just background text we get which should have read like info dump, really didn’t. In fact, they served to round out the story well, and at times I was more engaged in those than the actual narrative. The magic system is a little hard to understand (less a system and more just existing), but doesn’t seem to be a focal point of the book, either. Tevi’s backstory, as told through Jemeryl’s POV, is interesting, as is the history of her island. I also do always appreciate a book that puts queerness as canon.

General nitpicks
There were a few POV fails in the book, where we went from third limited to some type of author voiceover, which threw me from the narrative. They waned as the book progressed, and the story relied more on block text of stories than authorial narration towards the end. I also just…with the cover…if this book hadn’t been recommended to me by three separate people I would have never bought it. The book deserves better cover art than this, really.

I’d actually recommend any new readers to this book to read the second half first, starting at the sorcerer’s POV. This section makes Tevi much more sympathetic, and makes her journey to the mainland much more relevant. I don’t think the reader would miss much by skipping the first half of the book, and then if desired, one could go back and read the front half to fill in worldbuilding and character arcs.

You can order THE EXILE AND THE SORCERER HERE

To read the review for the next book in the series, THE TRAITOR AND THE CHALICE, click here.

August 13, 2017

Review: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

Genre: YA fantasy

Pairings: f/m, although nods given to f/f as occurring in world

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

So S.A. Chakraborty and I are from the first #DVpit cohort, and were some of the first to get book deals. She also signed a trilogy, so there are two more books in this series currently in the works. The City of Brass is currently only available for preorder, but you should go do that right now! This book was amazing! (link at end of review)

Wow. Just…wow.

The City of Brass is a rich, intriguing tale of destiny, magic, djinn, and a young thief pulled between her mysterious past and her unexpected future.

Nahri
The story is told through two POV characters, Nahri, the young thief, and Ali, who is not a djinn. Really. Don’t make him run you through. The main story is, of course, Nahri’s, and I found her to be compelling right from the first page. I was immediately gripped by her world, her struggles, and the weight of her ancestry (as discovered later in the book). Her struggles were realistic, her emotions understandable, and her abilities simultaneously awesome but grounded.

Description
The book is strong on descriptive language, seldom if ever venturing into purple prose. Chakraborty gives us a strong flavor for the lands and cultures of the book, so much so that one can smell the market place, see the brass, feel the silk.

Downsides
I dropped a star only because of the pacing. I’m not generally a YA reader, so keep that in mind, but I found the pacing of the last 1/3 of the book to be very slow. That was particularly strange, since the first 2/3 of the book flew by, and I was eagerly turning pages. As I reached the climax, however, I found myself upset with a lack of closure and no completion of any arc. I realize this is the first in a trilogy, but generally I like each book to be a self-contained story in which the wider plot elements continue on, but the small stuff resolves. I didn’t get that in The City of Brass, and the sense of wonder I had at the start of the book ended on a flatter note than I would have liked.

Overall, however, this was a hands down amazing book that should thrill YA readers, both young and old.

Preorder The City of Brass here.

August 3, 2017

Review – Addict by Matt Doyle

Genre: sci fi / cyberpunk

Pairing: f/f

Rating: 3.5 stars – an interesting world with a noir feel

Review

Plot
Cassie is a PI, there’s a lady in trouble, it’s a match made in cyberpunk heaven. One part noir, one part tech, throw in a bit of furry and kink and you have Addict.

Thoughts
The writing was very smooth and it was an easy read. Cassie was an interesting character, and I really loved the tech world. I found the plot hard to follow in places, and the villains in some cases a bit too ‘mustachio-twirling’, but it was all in good fun. Unfortunately the long bouts of dialogue and confusing ‘who done its’ made it difficult for me to really delve into the narrative. My favorite parts were where we were learning about the world (panther suit FTW), or the last two chapters, where we get to see some personal growth of Cassie. I would have loved more about the world in general, especially the body modification parts, but Cassie did a good job of carrying the narrative and being a sympathetic character.

The action scenes were well written, the blocking spot on, and the dialogue seldom felt stilted. Fans of light dystopian, cyberpunk, and urban sci fi I think would really enjoy this book.

Buy the ebook here

Buy the print book here

July 15, 2017

Review – Nightshade by Brooke Radley

Genre: Fantasy

Pairing: f/f

Review

This book had just about every element I look for in a fantasy–magic, women in positions of power but also morally ambiguous, ladies loving ladies, fisticuffs… and yet…

Plot
Eleanor Reed is a mage fresh out of magic school and through some author handwavium (there is a ton of this, so heads up) ends up going undercover to bust The Drug Ring Of The Century with a poorly fleshed out BFF. The whys are unclear, the where is pretty unclear (they have three moons, so not our world, but still medieval), and the reasoning is murky at best. The first forty-seven pages are basically a wash, as the author uses them for info dump after info dump, telling us about the world instead of showing it. I was three pages away from DNF, but finally got interested on page forty-eight, and didn’t find a reasonable hook until page eighty-three. That is a long time to go without a hook or character connection.

Other issues kept cropping up in the first fifty pages that consistently jarred me from the narrative. The text contradicted itself in no less than five places during this time (did Tony approve or not approve of Eleanor helping Ben out? Did Ben fail his first mission or not fail his first mission?). Major plot holes kept popping up (why was Cassandra at the first bar to begin with, scoping Elanor out? If Eleanor was so well guarded at the end of the book, how does she sneak out? How in the hell does Eleanor manage to scythe almost every other day with no one noticing, when she is residing at Villain Base Camp?)

The beginning and end of this book were not strong, and felt like the author just forcibly manhandling the plot in the direction they thought it should go. The story is really its strongest when Eleanor and Cassandra interact, and when the plot and setting is allowed to unfold through their eyes. The sexual tension is palpable in this area, the characters resonate, and things flow smoothly. This could have been a really fun book had it started cold at page eighty or so, and had a more drawn out ending in which we really got to see a decent battle between the kingdom forces and the thieves. Which brings me to my next quibble…

Magic System
It almost worked. Almost. There is no well defined magic system, so if you’re into that, move along. The system has costs, which is good (energy, so pretty basic), but the handwavium is strong in this area. Eleanor is a water mage but either knows or doesn’t know aspects of other magic, depending on what suits the narrative. The magic use either drains her or doesn’t affect her too much, depending on what suits the narrative. And at the end of the book Eleanor is using so much magic, from so many disciplines, that any attempt at rigor is basically thrown out the window. The water magic made a lot of sense when she was pretending to be a basic witch, and I really liked the explanations that came with it, and how the use was described. Once she was allowed to go full mage again, the loose rules system went completely out the window.

Overall
It had so much potential that was never realized. The book could have been strengthened a great deal with more ‘in late, out early,’ as well as much more focus on plot consistency. I could see this being a strong novella, or strong novel, if the end was reworked and the first eighty pages cut.

You can buy Nightshade here.

July 12, 2017

Review – Trans Liberty Riot Brigade by L.M. Pierce

I’ve been doing a lot of searching, recently, for good speculative fiction books with queer characters, especially trans, f/f, or nonbinary/female leads. What better way to share my findings with the world than with reviews? I’ll try to do one every two weeks or so, so if you’re also crushing hard for queer speculative fiction, this is your place!

Trans Liberty Riot Brigade – L.M. Pierce

Genre: dystopian

Pairing: N/A

Rating: Three stars

General-
Trans Liberty Riot Brigade tells the story of Andi, an intersex nonbinary teenager, struggling to exist and be safe within a dystopian society hell bent on making sure all of its residents are either ‘male’ or ‘female’.

The year is…uncertain. Somewhere not too far off our own timeline. The place is the USA, except now under a much more sinister name. Society is deeply stratified and in some type of event reminiscent of the Outpost occurrences in ‘Santa Olivia’, the US border has been closed and a huge wall erected. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out.

We don’t get a lot of motivation for the US doing this, other than basic power hunger and control, and something about a bomb which I wasn’t clear on. The set up is very ‘Hunger Games’ in the way the population is kept deeply in check. Of utmost importance in this country is population control, and there’s a big problem, in that the female babies keep coming out with ambiguous genitalia.

Most are reassigned and have surgery at birth, but those born outside a license, or to the very poor, live in the slums and form a band of revolutionaries – the Trans Liberty Riot Brigade.

World Building –
This was probably my favorite part. The description of the slums, and the world in general, was very clear. The language was never excessive (in terms of being beaten with adjectives), and the reader was given just enough information for flavor, without being bored to death with pages of description. I really did feel like I was in the slums, at the farm, in the wall. To the author, well done!

Plot Elements-
The set up was good, and the world sufficiently outlined to make it believable. The plot…wandered in places. I didn’t feel like I was given quite enough information to know why people were doing the things they were doing (outside of the ‘don’t want to get your dick cut off’ motivation, which is, in itself, highly compelling). I just never felt like I had a clear line of direction for Andi, nor for the Brigade. Yes, getting people to stop cutting bits off of babies is an excellent goal, but very large. I do know that some people prefer plots without clear direction (more of a ‘character wander and explore’ type). If this is you, then you will enjoy this book!

Characters-
Generally the characters were well done. Andi is well rounded, however distinctly lacks agency. Andi only ever seems to do things in response to other people’s prodding or begging, even at the very end. I didn’t see a large character arc for Andi. I kept thinking at the end, when Andi has to keep the baddies from detonating a bomb, that the character would take the lead, but this didn’t happen. It might be set up for future books (from the ending it does seem that there is a lot more to do), but I’m not certain. Andi acts more like a bobber on the waves than the hook, if you’re into fishing metaphors. Other characters did not suffer from a similar deficiency, and I enjoyed the secondary characters a great deal.

The one thing that did trip me up was the dialect writing. Those who have read ‘Karen Memory’ will be familiar with this style of writing, although TLRB takes it a step further. There were some sections and some characters that I simply could not parse what was being said. Other times I became frustrated because the text was too tiring to read. If dialect-style writing works for you, this book is an excellent choice! If not, just be warned. It’s worth getting through, but it was a struggle.

Gender Politics
Interesting questions were brought up in the book that are well worthy of a book club discussion. Descriptions of intersex genitalia, and variations in gender identity and expression were tastefully done, and show a strong understanding of the community. I was, however, caught on two instances of the use of ‘she’ to describe Andi, who several times in the book is adamant about not being a man or a woman. As there was no incidence where Andi chooses a pronoun or has a discussion about them, these two instances, while in Andi’s POV (book is in first person), rang a bit false. Those are pretty minor quibbles, however, and no reason to not read the book.

Overall, I was entertained and fascinated by the world presented. Fans of dystopian fantasy, and fans of queer fantasy, will enjoy this book.

You can buy Trans Liberty Riot Brigade at the following places:

Publisher – Ninestar Press

Buy from Amazon