Tag: Review

Review: Justice in a Dead Land

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Justice

When I started reading, I wasn’t sure if this was a short story or just a sample.  The cover says “World Devoured Part One”, so I was thinking this might be the beginning of a series or trilogy.  I contacted the publisher (All Night Reads), and it turns out that Justice in a Dead Land is the first part of a serial, with each part being released on Mondays starting Oct. 13th.(The Amazon page has since been updated.)

That information shifted my opinion a bit.  Mostly because, while I enjoyed it, as a book, I really don’t think this story would work.  The pacing, character development, dialogue, etc. are all wrong for a book; however, they fit perfectly for a serial.  They would also be perfect for a comic book or a TV show.  Speaking of TV shows, while the beginning was reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, I kept thinking of Captain Mal from Firefly every time the main character,Penelope, spoke.  It’s not that she comes off as mannish, but that her personality is similar.  Though the story itself is very different, I’d say the setting, the kinds of situations the characters find themselves in, and the dialogue would have been perfect for Firefly, except Justice in a Dead Land doesn’t have space ships.  That’s not a negative (unless you absolutely require space ships).  I just don’t want anyone thinking it has everything Firefly had.  There is magic, however, and the descriptions of it made me think of the Dust in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

All of this, I loved.  If anything, I’d say the only thing I’m a bit iffy on is that it feels more like YA Fantasy than it does any other genre.  YA isn’t horrible, but I’ve read few YA books that I thought were good, much less that were great.  I think that I will continue to enjoy the World Devoured serial, but it’s too early to tell.  I’m definitely buying the next part to find out what happens though, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys quest narratives, independent comic books, or dystopian westerns.

Review: Black Swan, White Raven

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Black White

Black Swan, White Raven is a short story anthology of modern, dark fairy tales.  What I love about anthologies is that each story is very different than the others.  If I don’t happen to like one of them, it’s quickly done and I can move on, and if the editors do a good job, there won’t be one after the other that I don’t like.  Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling did well in that regard.  Also, they did a great job of choosing a first story, “The Flounder’s Kiss” by Michael Cadnum, that sucked me in and made me hungry for the next, and they ended with a story equally as good, “Godmother Death” by Jane Yolen, that left me satisfied and feeling generally positive towards the book as a whole.

I wish I could say the number of stories I liked outweighed the bad, but they were equal.  It could have been worse, but the bad ones I absolutely despised, such as “Snow in Dirt” by Michael Blumlein, or was literally bored to sleep by, as with “True Thomas” by Bruce Glassco.  Then there was “The True Story” by Pat Murphy, which came off as a preachy, condescending Feminist rant more than it did an actual story.  I consider myself a Feminist, and I feel that there is an excellent way of re-telling a classic fairy tale that doesn’t alienate the audience and give credence to the prevailing misconceptions about Feminism.  An example of that would be the movie Maleficent.  Oh, I wish that were a book!  “The Black Fairy’s Curse”, by Karen Joy Fowler, was disjointed and confusing, and Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Insomniac Night” made me extremely anxious with it’s stream of consciousness and bouncing back and forth between the present and the past.  I had the feeling something horrible was going to happen at any moment, but then it ended so abruptly, I had to put the book aside for awhile before I could continue on to the next story.

Another story that made me pause for a bit, but that I loved, was “No Bigger than my Thumb” by Esther M. Friesner.  I have to say that this one could fit very well into the Horror genre.  It was excellent, and very unsettling.  “The Trial of Hansel and Gretel” by Garry Kilworth, was an ingenious twist on the classic, as was “Steadfast” by Nancy Kress.  I also greatly enjoyed “Rapunzel” by Anne Bishop, which is told from the perspectives of Rapunzel’s mother, the witch who keeps Rapunzel in the tower, and Rapunzel herself.  Not only was each perspective insightful, but it held to the classic inclusion of threes in a very modern way.  This is the only one that I think could safely be shared with a teenage daughter.  The rest are definitely for adults, not just for the sexual content in several of them, but because of the many disturbing scenes.

Overall, I recommend Black Swan, White Raven to anyone who loves dark fantasy, horror, and alternative versions of fairy tales, especially if you’re looking for new authors to read.

 

Review: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

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Witches

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness starts out in a library!  The main character drinks copious amounts of tea, does yoga, is a historian, and seems to have agency!  There are not only witches but vampires, too!  Oh, this book seemed so perfect for me for the first 13 chapters…and then it began a slow decline towards horribleness.  It wasn’t until chapter 29 that it quickly went back to being the good book I was reading when I started it.  What made approximately half of the book so close to unbearable that I almost quit reading?

First off, the wine and food descriptions get to the point of being snobbish and over the top ridiculous.  One of the wines the main characters drink “smelled like lemon floor polish and smoke and tasted like chalk and butterscotch.”  I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I would consider tasting something that smells like floor polish, and if I somehow lost my mind and craved the taste of a cleaning product, I don’t see myself as enjoying the taste of chalk, even when combined with butterscotch.  Another poor choice of words is the line “…she said in a husky voice of sand and treacle”.  There comes a point when you’re trying so hard to be original in your descriptions that you should stick to the tried and true.  However, she goes in the opposite direction of original description by repeatedly using the words “ice and snow(flakes)” when referring to being looked at by a vampire.  After the third or fourth time she mentions this feeling, I wanted to scream “I GET IT ALREADY!”

Secondly, she makes a thinly veiled reference to Anne Rice’s Lestat character that feels too much like an “oh look at me, aren’t I smart and knowledgeable about popular vampire fiction.”  On top of that, most of the plot seems like a ripoff of Twilight, to include Diana becoming a character with no agency that is seemingly helpless, naive, and oblivious.  I get the impression that the author loved Twilight so much that she rewrote it with her as the main character, living out her ultimate fantasy.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that…as long as you do it well.  There are no original stories; that goes double for vampire fiction, and triple for vampire romances.  Which brings me to my third problem with this book…

At one time in my life, I would’ve found the vampire, Matthew, being the alpha of his “pack” irresistibly sexy.  Now, I find it’s an excuse to act like a controlling and domineering creep.  He treats Diana as if she’s not capable of making decisions, and comes across as a parental figure, with Diana being “Daddy’s little princess”. What’s worse is Matthew’s description, and actions, are explicitly related to wolf behavior.  Please, for the love of the written word, SHOW, don’t TELL!  The author also led me to believe she thinks her audience is just as stupid as Diana by frequently pointing out the obvious.

Last, but not least, the grammatically borked line “Was it humans?”  At first, I felt judgmental, but then I read the line to my boyfriend to gauge his reaction.  I concluded that I would be humiliated if these words left my mouth in normal conversation, and it’s completely unbelievable that an academic like Diana would talk like a 3rd grader.

I have other problems with this book, but they include spoilers.  Despite half the book being despicable, the other half, especially the ending, makes me want to read the next book.  So, on the off chance that you might wish to do the same, I won’t write about those parts that give away specific plot details.  All said and done I think it’s a book worth reading if you’re very forgiving of its faults, but not worth buying.  Borrow it from someone who already made the mistake of paying for it, or check it out from the library.

Classics Club: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Treasure Island

Though Treasure Island is short enough to be considered a one night read, it took me about a week to finish.  I enjoyed it, but life interfered with me trying to finish it within a couple days.  The story seems more meant for children, but the adult part of me didn’t get in the way, especially since there were so many turns of phrase and events throughout that are the origins (or at least the near-origins) of the pirate tale in popular culture.  Who hasn’t heard of Long John Silver or Davy Jone’s Locker or the phrase “shiver my timbers!” even if they’ve never read the book?  Now I’m in the mood to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, or even The Princess Bride, just for the sake of watching Captain Jack Sparrow or “the dread pirate Roberts”!

Since tomorrow is the 1st of September, when I usually stop reading what I consider to be Summer books and start reading my Autumn books, I think Treasure Island was the perfect book to close out my Summer, and to begin crossing off books from my Classics Club list.

The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin

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The Killing Moon

I went back and forth between being interested and not being interested in this book, just as I had been with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  The only reason I even read The Killing Moon was because it was one of the items in the Quarterly box from Book Riot.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t have ever thought to read it, and I certainly wouldn’t have bought it.

Though this is only the second book of Jemisin’s that I’ve read, and more than likely the last, I’m going to take a guess that all of her books involve the same formula: a moralistic Fantasy involving race and class issues and the mythology/culture from a non-typical (i.e. medieval European) Fantasy setting, a strong female character who finds herself in a role or situation she either doesn’t like or doesn’t think she can handle, and who is at odds with an even stronger male character while both are struggling against a truly evil character who is planning to gain absolute power.  None of the characters have any real depth or ever surprise me by doing or saying something that makes me think perhaps they’re more than two dimensional.  By the end, good conquers evil and the two protagonists have a better understanding of each other.  In other words, Jemisin writes Disney stories.  All that’s missing is the song and dance with some comedic moments thrown in to keep it lighthearted.

While there’s nothing wrong with using a formula (some of the best books I’ve ever read are formulaic, and without formulas we wouldn’t have popular genres like Romance or Fantasy/Sci-Fi), it can get a bit tedious and cause me to lose interest.  There’s a reason I only read one book a year from some of my favorite series, and those series offer something else that keeps me reading and allows me to overlook the formula, or, in some rare cases, not even notice it until I’ve finished the book.  Unfortunately, Jemisin doesn’t offer that “something else”.

With all of that being said, I didn’t hate this book.  It took me quite a bit longer than it should have for me to finish it, due to all of the above, but I still liked it enough to continue reading after the first fifty pages, and then enough to continue to the end.  Most Disney stories aren’t horrible, even if they are full of cliches, and in most cases, they’re great for a Summer read because they don’t require much thought.  The Killing Moon‘s setting alone made it good for reading during the Summer, and the addition of the race, class and other social issues made it just thoughtful enough to keep it from feeling like a guilty pleasure or just pure brain candy.