Book Review – An Artificial Night

Title: An Artificial Night

Author: Seanan McGuire

Format: eBook

Year Published: 2010

An Artificial Night is the third Toby Daye book, and a heart-wrenching ride from start to finish. Somebody is stealing children, both Fae and human, and the children of some of toby’s best friends are taken. In order to get them back, she must travel into a magical realm reachable only by three roads, and where dangers rest round every corner.

Toby is sharper in this book than she had been in the previous stories – the mistakes she makes aren’t ones that make you want to shake her, and even when events get the best of her, you mourn with her, rather than have a little voice going “well, it’s nothing more than you deserved” in the back of your mind. (Or is that just me?)

Not only does Toby have to find the missing children, she has to face the fact that her Fetch – the harbinger of her death, has shown up and made herself comfortable in Toby’s life. While in some cases this makes her reckless, it’s not something that is maddening – every mistake has a base where you can see how the decision was made. And the ending feels satisfying and well-earned – it doesn’t come cheap or easy, but it is what needed to happen.

(One of the things that this was story does is set up threads that are paid off several books down the line – in looking it over again, I see how the seeds have been sown. Some of these are ones that I enjoyed – others, not so much.)

Quentin remains one of my favorite characters – he’s a teenager, but he behaves believably not only as a teen, but as one who is growing up and maturing.

May, Toby’s Fetch, is a fun character – a glimpse of who Toby could possibly have been if all of the tragedies in her life hadn’t happened. even though her role should have been clear-cut, she’s allowed a chance to grow and develop over the course of the book.

Overall, a very good book. 3.5/5 stars.

Book Review – Rosemary and Rue

Title: Rosemary and Rue

Author: Seanan McGuire

Format: Paperback

Year Published: 2009

Rosemary and Rue was the very first Seanan McGuire book I tried to read, and as I’ve said before, I slammed hard against the first-person POV and couldn’t finish. But since I’ve been blazing my way through her other books, I decided to give it another try.

This time it grabbed me and I raced through it. Overall I enjoyed it, though there were some quibbles I had that are probably my own personal hang-ups. (Full disclosure here: the only one I have not read at this point is Once Broken Faith.)

The story starts with October “Toby” Daye, changeling and Knight, on the hunt for her Liege Lord’s wife and daughter, before she gets turned into a fish and looses fourteen years of her life.

And that’s just the start of Toby’s adventures. Staying as far away from the world that cost her the daughter she loves dearly, Toby is dragged back in when a friend is killed and casts a curse on Toby that forces her to investigate the murder, or die herself.

The force of the curse is, truthfully, what pushes the story through at what is really a breakneck paces. Some of that is warranted – Toby would never go back into the world of Faerie of her own volition – but it does create a book where it feels like Toby never gets a break.

One of the things that this brutal pace does is to put Toby in mortal danger multiple times – but truthfully, how many times can she almost die in one book? After the first couple, suspension of disbelief is slim. (It doesn’t help, mind, that I knew that there were 9 more books.)

The romance is heavy in the book, too, with Toby going between two old lovers, with a third (though this is  more subtext than anything) hanging in the wings. Of the three, though I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to like Connor, he’s the one I felt the most unfavorable toward – I don’t like people who cheat, and his actions made it obvious it was only his respect for Toby that prevented him from cheating on his wife. (Who is, yes, evil, but my opinion still holds.)

The author ties up the story with skill, pulling little hints here and there that play off big later (and, minor spoilers, play off much later in the series). It took a while to suspect the Big Bad, and his ending felt satisfactory.

A strong start to a strong series, 3.5/5 stars.

Book Review – Sparrow Hill Road

Title: Sparrow Hill Road

Author: Seanan McGuire

Format: Paperback

Year Published: 2014

You’ve heard the stories – a man picks up a girl on the side of the road on prom night, heads off with her somewhere, and it’s only the next morning that he discovers that she’s dead.

Her name is Rose, and she’s been dead for a long time, holding out her thumb and hitching rides, saving what lives she can. She was run off Sparrow Hill Road by a man named Bobby Cross – who needs her death to pay a price for him. Unfortunately, Rose isn’t okay with this idea, and she’s been running to stay out of his clutches for more than sixty years.

Sparrow Hill Road began life as a series of short stories, and causes the somewhat disjointed feel of the book. While there is definitely an overarching plot, and the stories do link together, there is no flow from one to another.

This is one book, though, where I will agree that the first-person POV was necessary – I’m not sure this book could have been told as successfully in third. We need to know what Rose is feeling and thinking and to make it an intimate experience.

I loved all the world-building that took place – dozens of ghost stories, and all with their own mythos, the different ways that they could play out, and still firmly rooted in the stories that are told around campfires. I liked the characters, too, and unlike some other recent books I’ve read, I liked the main character as much as the side characters. Rose is allowed to have flaws, and those flaws get her into trouble sometimes, and she is hurt (or others are hurt) because of it.

Beyond the disjointedness of the book, the biggest issue for me is that the big bad isn’t defeated, though that seemed to be where it was headed. They won a battle against him, but they don’t win the war. Not something I necessarily object to, but I was expecting something bigger at the end and felt let-down when I didn’t get it.

Over all, a 3.5/5, and I look forward to the sequels.

Book Review – Hunter

Title: Hunter

Author: Mercedes Lackey

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2015

I’m on record for how much I like Mercedes Lackey (generally). Hunter is no exception to this rule, though it definitely falls into the category of brain candy. Which was fine, since I was reading it on the beach – a good beach read.

Hunter is the story of a world where the barriers between our world and the Otherworld were ripped open, and civilization is only now starting to recover. One of the reasons for this recovery is the Hunters, people who are gifted with magic and the ability to fight the creatures that come through from the Otherworld.

Joyeaux Charmand has been training to be a Hunter since she was very young, but now has been taken from her small, tight-knit community to the big city. The Apex is the hub of civilization, where Hunters are supposed to come and be trained, and, as Joy soon discovers, where they are also celebrities and reality stars.

Determined to make her mentors and uncle proud and to protect the Cits of this new world she’s in, Joy throws herself into the fight. But it’s not as straightforward as it seems, for she has enemies she doesn’t expect, and when an attack against her goes awry, she finds herself in a fight that she isn’t sure she can win, and where not-winning means death.

I enjoyed Hunter, though, as I said, it’s brain candy. It’s written in first-person (I know! Shock!), but I was able to push past that. I will say, despite the fact that Lackey’s best writing skill is character creation, I found Joy to relatively unflawed, and not flawed with things that really affect her or other people. She is very advanced (though she is aware she must hide how she becomes so advanced), and yet this never seems to make other people suspicious (though she should be a novice at the start, despite being trained for “six months”).

Instead of connecting strongly with Joy, I connected strongest with her trainers/mentors, and with her uncle (though he gets relatively little screen time). And though I am not necessarily anti-romance, I did not feel that the romance between Joy and Josh was necessary and did, in some ways, detract a bit from the main plot. I adored all of Joy’s Hounds, supernatural creatures that come from the Otherworld to help her fight, and I loved the bits we get about Joy’s life before coming to the City, and about the training she went through there.

Over all, though, I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading Elite in September. 3.5/5 stars.

Book Review – Brotherhood in Death

Title: Brotherhood in Death

Author: J.D. Robb

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2016

Another J.D. Robb book, another review. 😉 I apparently can’t stop myself. That said, this was a book that involved one of my favorite secondary characters in this series, so I was pretty pumped to read it.

The book starts with said favorite character, Dennis Mira, going across town to meet/confront his cousin, who is planning on selling a house that they co-own – a plan that Dennis is not on-board with. Instead of getting into it with his cousin, Dennis sees his cousin injured, gets hit over the head, and when he comes to, his cousin and attacker are gone.

Dennis calls Eve, and she must find out who would have hurt him, or his cousin. The secret lies in his cousin’s past, and answers will hurt everyone before she’s done finding them.

While Eve pegs the killer fairly early on, the story is still engaging as we try to figure out why and then how and where the next death will occur. And, continuing with the more recent books, we don’t get a laundry list of favorite side characters – the ones that are brought up all have a role to play – and the killer isn’t taunting us and we’re just waiting for them to get arrested, there’s actually uncertainty on our side as well. (This is also another case where we feel more for the killer than we do the victim, which is always a bit… sad.)

So, all-in-all, writing was what I expected, plot-wise, the story falls upper-middle range of the pack, so this book gets a solid 3.5/5.

 

Book Review – Games Wizards Play

Title: Games Wizards Play

Author:  Diane Duane

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2016

I’m a long-time fan of Diane Duane. I discovered her Young Wizards book in high school, and pretty much fell in love immediately. So, in general, I was predisposed to like Games Wizards Play.

Games Wizards Play is the tenth book in her Young Wizards series, which is really nothing at all like Harry Potter, despite the surface similarities.

I very much enjoyed it, but I would not recommend it for people who have not read the rest of the series – there is some backstory given, but in general the author assumes that you’ve read and retained the previous books.

The book starts with a bang, literally, as Kit is involved in a war-game on the moon, and then we get flung into the ocean where Nita is testing out a type of shape-shifting spell that was brought up in previous books. Once away from Nita, we go to her sister Dairine, who is working with a mentor to learn to control suns. A quick introduction of our main cast, and then we’re introduced to the main plot: the Invitational, an event that occurs every 11 years where wizards are encouraged to build a spell that will allow them to show off to the whole world.

Nita, Kit, and Dairine are all selected to be mentors to wizards in the Invitational, and they find that they have challenges that they are not used to having.

The book was a solid offering in the Young Wizards universe, but it was not outstanding. Despite the book’s length, the ending felt very rushed as all of the problems were loaded upon the characters at once, rather than being allowed to be introduced earlier, and while the romance angle was necessary, based up on events of the previous book, it got more play time than it might necessarily have needed.

The ‘how do I navigate starting a romance with my best friend?’ question period Nita goes through is very true-to-life, however, and I loved the scene with her dad about it. I also loved Dairine a lot more in this book than I have in books previous – Nita has always been my favorite – but I do feel that our usual supporting cast are part of a check-list of people that should be mentioned, and then are shunted off to the side again.

The new supporting characters – Penn, Nita and Kit’s mentee; Mehrnaz, Dairine’s mentee; and Nelaid, Dairine’s mentor/Roshaun’s father – are very distinct characters. Not necessarily likeable (at least not all the time) but no character should always be likeable.

All in all, I enjoyed the book, and will reread it (though, perhaps, not as much as I’ve reread the first few books). 3.5/5 stars

Book Review – Trixter

Title: Trixter

Author: Alethea Kontis

Format: E-book

Year Published: 2015

Trixter is the first in a companion series to The Woodcutter Sisters. It follows the story of Trix, the baby brother of the Woodcutter family (although he’s technically a cousin). Like Dearest, the story starts shortly after the opening events in Hero. Trix has been contacted in dreams by his birthmother, and doesn’t dare allow his foster mother to forbid him to go to her. Instead he doctors the family stew into a sleeping potion, and runs.

He doesn’t get far before he is overtaken by the ocean that his sister Saturday calls to the land, saving the lives of several creatures along the way (for he is, after all, The Boy Who Talks to Animals). There he meets Lizinia, a girl turned to gold as a gift by Papa Catto, the head of the cats that she had lived with and worked for. Together, they continue to head for the Abbey where Trix’s birthmother is sending them.

For most of the book, Trix doesn’t make a misstep. He’s wracked with guilt over dosing his family, but he still rescues several creatures and makes the correct choices when meeting Lizinia for the first time. Even when he does choose wrong, there are no lasting consequences from it. However, while I’m pretty sure I’d want to strangle him if I knew him in real life, his cheerful outlook on life and willingness to take things as they come allowed me to overlook the lack of true conflict in the book. I do believe that the second book will contain more chances for Trix to grow as a character, as he heads off to meet his father at the end of this one.

A solid offering in the Woodcutter world; if you enjoyed the others, you’ll enjoy this one. 3.5/5.

Book Review – The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

Title: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

Author: Catherynne M. Valente

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2012

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland is the sequel to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland and picks the story up a year later. September has returned from her adventures in Fairyland changed, and the past year has forced a bit of growing up, but also thrown a few obstacles in her way. She no longer fits in with her classmates – she’s been through things, seen things, that they haven’t.

On the eve of September’s thirteenth birthday, she finds her way back into Fairyland again. What she discovers there is that everything is completely wrong – her shadow, given away during some of the events of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, has taken over the Fairyland-Below and is stealing everybody’s shadows. In doing so, she’s also stealing the magic out of Fairyland.

Although September longs to see her friends again, she chooses to go to Fairyland-Below to fix the mistakes she’d made. There she meets with the shadow versions of her friends, but they’re different, just as her shadow-self is different. She also makes new friends, and new mistakes. One of the best things about September, though, is that she’ll admit she’s made a mistake and then try to fix it. (Sometimes she knows it’s a mistake and goes ahead and does the thing anyway, which keeps her from being perfect-and therefore boring.)

The big twist in the story resolves a question I’d had about a thing in the previous book (I won’t spoil either), and although it took a while for me to get into the one – I think i was more than halfway through before I got to the “no stopping place” – once I did, I plowed through.

All in all, I’m giving this 3.5/5 stars – it loses half a star due to the slowish start.

Book Review – The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Title: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Author: Catherynne M. Valente

Format: Hardback

Year Published: 2011

I was unsure of how I felt about this book to begin with. Part of that was because I was trying to read at work and kept getting interrupted (it took two days to read the first eleven pages) and the other part is because the narrator kept breaking the fourth wall, similarly to the narrator in The Anybodies. But where that didn’t work for me in The Anybodies, it did work for me here, I think because the narrator in this book was less of a character and more of a generic narrator.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland is about a girl named September who gets whisked away to Fairyland by a Green Wind and a Leopard. Once there, she finds herself off on an adventure, to rescue a spoon for some witches from the Marquess who rules over the land. This leads her to meeting with new friends (like A-Through-L, a Wyvern, who is probably my favorite character) and then she ends up running afoul of the Marquess. Then she’s forced to go on another quest, but this one is to save her friends.

September, as a heroine, is plucky, and impulsive, and altogether likeable. I really enjoyed following along with her adventures, and I loved the side characters as well. the big plot twist – well, I called it relatively early on in the book, but that’s not terribly unusual for me.

Over all, a 3.5/5 – not a book for everybody, but those who like fairy tales and plucky heroines will like this book.

Book Review – Blood Magick

Title: Blood Magick

Author: Nora Roberts

Format: Trade Paperback

Year Published: 2014

And so the Cousins O’Dwyer saga draws to a close (unless Roberts decides to play in this world again, which doesn’t happen as often anymore but isn’t out of the realm of possibility). The book begins a month or so after the end of Shadow Spell, where our heroes almost succeeded in defeating Cabhan but only succeeded in weakening him.

Blood Magick follows Branna and Fin as they struggle with the love that they feel for each other, and the knowledge that they can never be together because of Fin’s blood connection to Cabhan. This is an unusual take for the typical Nora Roberts trilogy (this is way I was reading these books – comparing them to her other trilogies, so sorry if the constant comparisons annoy you.) In some ways, we get the hardest part of their struggles in Dark Witch and Shadow Spell – where they’re not ready to admit to themselves, much less each other, that they’re still in love. Blood Magick has less of the “I love you but I’m pretending that I don’t” angst and more “I love you, but we can’t ever be together” type of angst.

Blood Magick continues the theme of having the past connect to the present in a very direct way, and the more I read of the original three Dark Witches, the more I wanted to read about them (in some ways I think because I didn’t already know the bare bones of how their story was going to go).

The defeat (spoiler alert!) of Cabhan felt kind of – random. Wait, now he’s allied himself with a demon? There were no hints of that in previous books! I understand that it wasn’t put in before because otherwise the characters would have had a better chance of defeating him, but it still came out of left field.

I liked how the “Fin is related to Cabhan” storyline resolved (I won’t spoil that one), and I am rather impressed that none of the three female characters were pregnant by the end (although both of the female original three were at one point, so maybe that counter-balances it). Still, as I powered through this in an evening, I’m giving it a 3.5/5.