Review: Truth In the Dark by Amy Lane

Ooh, friends, I’m so in love with Amy Lane’s work. Not only does she write fabulous stories, but she’s got a hell of a narrative range. To date, I’ve read two of her sweet contemporary romances, one dark-as-hell SF offering, and TRUTH IN THE DARK [Amazon | Scribd], a fairy tale that straddles the line between these two extremes.

Naef, a young woodworker, has been tormented all his life because of his appearance, and he’s raised a prickly set of defenses against future hurt. The only people he’ll allow close to him are his sister and his mother. When said sister hesitates to marry her true love because it would mean leaving Naef on his own, her suitor proposes a solution to settle her fears. Naef will spend a year as companion to the suitor’s cousin, freeing his sister from worry while introducing Naef to an unusual community where he can start fresh.

The cousin in question turns out to be a man cursed with the shape of an anthropomorphic lion and saddled with the improbable name Aerie-Smith. Aerie-Smith’s got an island full of subjects whose animal forms are more confining than his own, and he promises Naef a home for a year if he’ll end his stint as companion by performing one regrettable act will not only secure Naef’s family’s future but also free everyone from their curse.

The resulting story is part “Beauty and the Beast,” part “East of the Sun, West of the Moon.” And I cried so damned hard.

Planner Printables: Tremontaine Set

I got a Happy Planner in mid-September, and it's been quite the delight. My planner keeps me motivated and on task every day, and it helps endow my life with some much-needed colour during this most difficult of seasons.

I've also had a great time making useful stuff for it. Folders. Tracking cards. Paperclips. Charms and tassels.

Stickers felt like the logical next step.

Review: The Purloined Poodle by Kevin Hearne

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

THE PURLOINED POODLE [Amazon | Audible], the latest novella in the Iron Druid Chronicles, finally turns the spotlight on Oberon, the Irish Wolfhound whose love of meat is matched only by his desire for thrilling stories into which he can insert himself. When Oberon and his Druid, Atticus, learn that someone has been kidnapping Grand Champion show dogs from across the Pacific Northwest, Oberon knows it’s both his duty and his privilege to find the culprit before any more hounds are hurt. No one with any decency could possibly leave a poodle in peril.

Oh my goodness, this was so much fun. Oberon has been my favourite IDC character from day one, and I had a blast getting inside his head in such an immersive way after years of watching him in a supporting role. He’s smart and intuitive, having been taught language and told a thousand interesting stories by his Druid, but he’s also very much a dog. He has trouble telling the difference between seconds and millennia, he’s firmly food-motivated, and he’s pretty sure the entire world centres on him. Which sounds arrogant, I know, but Oberon’s so sincere, and so willing to use his Main Character status to help others, that his self-interest loops past arrogance and lands him straight in the middle of charming.

Further Gushing Re: Tremontaine Season Two

The new season of TREMONTAINE began yesterday, and I’ve made no secret of how excited I am. Continually tweeting my feels is all very well and good, but I wanted to provided y’all with a somewhat longer list of five reasons I’m jumping up and down in delight over this serial:

1. The Duchess is back

I love Diane de Tremontaine so. Frickin’. Much. As I said when I reviewed Season Two’s premiere episode, she’s a fabulous and compelling character because she acts in her own self interest; a motive female characters are seldom allowed to embrace. She’ll scheme and socialize and sleep her way to the top because it's the best way to promote her personal agenda, and damn how it affects anyone else. And if she can accomplish all her goals without ever letting anyone see how many strings she's pulled, so much the better.

She’s my favourite.

Review: Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

Mia Corvere has spent the six years since her father’s execution transforming herself into an instrument of vengeance aimed at the men who branded him a traitor rather than a hero. She’s good, but she knows only a Blade of Niah, dark goddess of assassins, could hope to achieve her aims. And the brutal test for admittance to Niah’s school beneath the Silent Mountain is nothing compared to the trials teachers and students alike have in store for her.

Here’s the thing: I want to tell you all about NEVERNIGHT [Amazon | The Book Depository] because I loved it deep in my soul--but the books I love the most are also the books I most struggle to talk about. So I’m gonna ramble, and I’m not gonna say nearly enough, and I’m gonna pray what I do say is enough to convince the fantasy-readers among you to seek out NEVERNIGHT as soon as ever you can.

It’s one of those glorious books that spoke both to my current self and to the me who discovered adult-marketed fantasy just over twenty years before the day when I plucked NEVERNIGHT off my library pile and dove in. The timing made it feel like more than simply a great read. It was a fucking amazing anniversary present.

Review: Rag and Bone by KJ Charles

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

RAG AND BONE [Amazon | Scribd] is the fifth novel set in KJ Charles’s Charm of Magpies world; however, it’s a connected story rather than a sequel to the previous books. You can read it as a standalone, though you may find yourself wishing for a touch more background on the practitioners of London if you take that route.

So far as the series chronology goes, RAG AND BONE takes place after FLIGHT OF MAGPIES and concurrently with JACKDAW. There’s the occasional non-spoilery update on where the justiciars are at with that particular problem, but you can easily read this before that.

The book is a direct sequel to “A Queer Trade,” a novella that originally appeared in the CHARMED AND DANGEROUS anthology and has since been made available as a standalone. While I wouldn’t call the original story optional, I realized the connection so far into RAG AND BONE that I decided I’d do best to read the novella after I’d finished the novel. Waiting didn’t harm my enjoyment one bit and I doubt it'll harm yours.

Background: complete. Let’s talk about the book itself.

Crispin, a young practitioner, is horrified to learn he’s unwittingly spent the last decade training as a warlock and frustrated with how difficult it is to break the habits his evil master taught him. His boyfriend, Ned, is a source of solace from the contempt he faces from London’s less diabolical magicians, but his trips to Ned’s place become considerably less restful when Ned’s neighbour spontaneously combusts. Everything about the man’s death points towards a sinister janus jug, but the justiciar who arrives on the scene can find no trace of magic either in the room or on the jug itself. Unwilling to let his friend's death become a cold case, Ned investigates while Crispin delves into a new approach to magic that could push him towards the answer--if it doesn't take him way from Ned entirely.

Tremontaine Season Two, Episode One: Convocation by Ellen Kushner

Review copy provided by the publisher, who has kindly accepted me into the TremonTEAM (ie, the Tremontaine street team).

Friends, the premiere episode of TREMONTAINE S2 might as well have been written with my wishlist in mind. I devoured it in a state of great excitement that I must now share with you in the hopes that you, too, will pick it up upon its release next month.

If you’ve missed my previous gushing on the matter, TREMONTAINE is a serial set in the same world as Ellen Kushner’s Riverside books: SWORDSPOINT, THE PRIVILEGE OF THE SWORD (one of my favourite books ever), and THE FALL OF THE KINGS (coauthored with Delia Sherman). The serial begins somewhat more than fifteen years before SWORDSPOINT and follows a diverse group of nobles, merchants, scholars, and lowlifes through an unnamed city in a secondary fantasy world that ditched its wizards, and its kings, a few hundred years back. A duchess seeks to repair her family’s shattered fortune and protect her darkest secret. A foreign trader struggles to redeem herself after an affair of the heart gone wrong. Mathematicians search for the calculations that’ll allow their country’s navigators to venture further afield. And the chocolate trade ties them all together.

It’s my favourite.

Review: Winter Oranges by Marie Sexton

Thank goodness for people who gush about books on Twitter, and for everyone who RTs them. A couple months back, I witnessed a storm of enthusiasm for Marie Sexton's WINTER ORANGES [Amazon | The Book Depository | Scribd] and knew I had to read it.

Because y'all, this book is awesome right from the premise on up. Jason used to be a child star/teen hearthrob in the JTT mold, but these days he’s muddling along through an assortment of horror sequels and one-off TV guest spots. Despite this decline in his fortunes, he’s been the tabloids’ favourite mark ever since they caught him making out with his best friend Dylan a year back. Ugh. Desperate for some privacy and a little time to reevaluate his life, Jason buys a furnished house in a small Idaho town and decides to hole up there until at least New Year's.

His plans change somewhat when he discovers his new possessions include a cursed snow globe with a Civil-War-Era farmer attached. Ben hasn’t talked to anyone since his sister bound him to the snow globe a hundred and fifty years ago to prevent him from joining the army, and he’s beyond thrilled someone can actually see him. Jason is initially less thrilled to have an incorporeal person living above his garage, but once he accepts Ben is a) not a paparazzo on a mission and b) real, the two of them quickly become friends, and eventually boyfriends.

Which is super awkward because to outsiders, from the local sheriff to a deeply concerned Dylan to the photographers who eventually track Jason down, it looks like Jason’s holding long, involved conversations with himself.

Television: Three Korean Dramas

When Tasha suggested Korean dramas would be very much in my wheelhouse, I assumed I was in for quite the time commitment. A quick Netflix search showed me how wrong I was. Yeah, Korean television produces a fair number of shows on the same model as UK and North American TV--ie, 10- or 20-episode seasons of 40- to 60-minute episodes—but I was surprised to discover that many of the series in my Netflix list were refreshingly short by my standards. And as an added bonus, each of them was a complete story with a proper ending.

I dove in, and quickly discovered Tasha was right. The Korean drama industry knows exactly what I want from my television. If you, too, are looking to experiment with K-Dramas, I highly recommend the three I started with:

Review: Monstress Volume One: Awakening by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takada

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Marjorie Liu and Sana Takada’s MONSTRESS [Amazon | The Book Depository] was one of my most anticipated trade collections of 2016. I loved the creators’ work on X-23, a Marvel property about young Wolverine clone Laura Kinney, and I couldn’t wait to see what they’d come up with in a creator-owned title, free from publishers’ restrictions and established canon.

Turns out, the results are impressive indeed.

MONSTRESS takes place in an alternate, matriarchal version of early twentieth century Asia. The war between Arcanics and humans is currently stalled thanks to a devastating weapon the Arcanics unleashed during the last major battle. The Cumaea, an order of scientist-nuns, are desperate to find a way to harness this technology for themselves and have stepped up their experiments on enslaved Arcanics, partly in search of answers and partly to mine the Arcanic essence that grants them their greatest power.

Maika, a teenage Arcanic, needs answers of her own, so she arranges to have herself sold to the Cumaea as a slave. But her bloody foray through their compound complicates everything and sends her on a journey in company with a fox-aspected young Arcanic and a two-tailed talking cat, plus a dark force that’s lodged itself in her soul.

It’s possible MONSTRESS isn’t entirely unique on the world’s stage, but I don’t believe anyone else working in English has put together a comic quite like this. Liu and Takada tackle concepts and issues that receive little thoughtful page time in mainstream comics, and they do so against a stunningly gorgeous backdrop.

Spotlight On Serial Box

Serial fiction held a special fascination for me when I was a kid. The characters in the children's novels I gulped down were always hankering after the latest installment of their favourite serials, delivered to them via newspapers or magazines, but my own early-90s childhood offered nothing comparable. All my prose fiction came to me in book-length form.

Of course, serials did exist back then. Magazines like F&SF and ASIMOV'S published them every now and again, and general authors Steven King and Jackie Collins released thin paperbacks that were designed to form one novel when you read 'em all together. These stories weren't accessible to someone like me, though, and they remained out of my reach until ebooks came along and changed the literary landscape.

And until publishers began releasing them on the regular, to my unending delight.

Review: Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Let's begin with a brief primer for those of you new to Guy Gavriel Kay's work.

Many of Kay’s books, including CHILDREN OF EARTH AND SKY [Amazon | The Book Depository], take place in a secondary world that’s followed a similar historical progression to ours. Similar is the key word there; while certain events and characters have their roots in historical fact, all the place names are different, the key players aren’t necessarily the same people as their real-world counterparts, and the geography doesn’t quite match up with ours.

I often recommend Kay to litfic readers who’d like to try fantasy but are leery of the genre. He adopts a traditionally literary approach to plot and character, while the fantastical elements tend to emerge organically once the reader's accustomed herself to the rest of the setup. One might find a ghost lurking between the pages, or an old god the contemporary religions can’t quite seem to oust. Occasionally, a character does outright magic, but such scenes have become increasingly less common in the sorta-alternate-history section of Kay’s bibliography. He’s interested in the circumstances that might cause magic to fade from the world, and in the ways magic finds to cling on even as its influence becomes less than it once was.

He’s also a prime pick for fantasy-shy readers because he doesn’t really write series. You should read the three-volume Fionavar Tapestry and the two-volume Sarantine Mosaic in publication order, but everything else works perfectly well as a standalone--with the caveat that those of his books that take place in the same world are richer if you know something about that world’s history.

Review: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

I attempted to review the first three books of the Raven Cycle, with varying degrees of success, so I figure I ought to make an effort with the finale as well. Preserve some continuity and all that.

Plus, THE RAVEN KING forced me to expand my Top 12 list into a Top 16¹. It’s serious between us, y’all, and I’d like to mark the occasion.

At the same time, though, this was a 6-star read. 5 stars is my “I loved it to the point of incoherence and/or verbosity” rating. 6 stars dials the incoherence angle right the hell up, especially when we’re talking about a highly anticipated finale I really, really don’t want to spoil for y’all.

So we’re taking the Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical route, with the understanding that I might imply some stuff about the other three books but I won’t get all, “OMG LEMME DESCRIBE THIS EXTREMELY VITAL SCENE” on you.

Review: The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Fourteen-year-old Faith is a gifted natural scientist committed to decoding the world around her--but Faith lives in 1860s England, and girls of her social class aren’t allowed to be anything more than attractive, soft-spoken burdens on their loved ones.

When her family relocates to an island that houses an important archaeological dig, Faith sees her chance to grasp the engaged life she’s always wanted; however, tragedy and Faith’s subsequent discovery of a mysterious plant changes everything. The Lie Tree grants true visions to those who whisper potent lies to it, and Faith is certain she can use it to unravel the mystery of her family’s misfortunes and bolster her own desperate desire for more.

Assuming the lies don’t drag her under before she gets the answers she needs.

THE LIE TREE [Amazon | The Book Depository], Frances Hardinge’s latest offering, received high praise upon its UK publication last year. Now North American audiences can get their hands on it, and I’ve got four reasons you should do just that:

Review: Anna Dressed In Blood by Kendare Blake

Y’all know the Basic Buffy Plot (hereafter BBP). Destined monster hunter arrives somewhere new, befriends local youths, turns them into allies, and ends up falling in love with one (or more) individuals their job demands they treat as enemies. It worked beautifully for Buffy, but it’s everywhere now and I no longer find it fresh enough for my tastes.

And yet, I adored ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD [Amazon | The Book Depository], a book that hits every beat of the BBP.

Theseus Cassio Lowood--better known as Cas--is the only person in the world who can kill ghosts. He sends them to the other side with the athame he inherited from his father; the athame that’s only a knife in anyone else’s hands. He and his mother move from place to place whenever someone in Cas’s network of informants gives him a promising new lead, and now they’ve ventured to Thunder Bay, Ontario, for the ultimate prize.

Anna Korlov became Anna Dressed In Blood after she was brutally murdered by an assailant who was never found. She’s spent the last sixty-odd years ripping people to shreds when they venture into the Victorian boarding house her mother once ran. And yet, she lets Cas leave unharmed.

Intrigued, Cas sets out to discover what makes Anna so powerful, and so different from every other ghost he’s ended.

You see the BBP there, yes? The parallels only strengthen as Cas settles in to his new home and allies himself with the usual suspects: a nervous yet personable young witch who’s also a social outcast, a Queen Bee who’s more than a stereotype, and a guy named Will Rosenberg.

Then, of course, there’s the dangerous entity he really should kill without hesitation, but with whom he forms a strong, and perhaps even loving, bond because she calls to him like no one else.

And somehow, it all works. Instead of shunting me out of the story as the BBP usually does, it pulled me further in and left to desperate to wallow in Cas’s world.

Review: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

A couple years back, Rainbow Rowell wrote a contemporary YA novel called FANGIRL. I talked about it at great length because I loved it deep in my soul, and I’m bringing it up again now because CARRY ON has a vital connection to that earlier work. Cath, FANGIRL’s protagonist, is a popular fanfic writer hard at work on CARRY ON, SIMON, her own conclusion to the bestselling Simon Snow series. Said series follows a young wizard through his eight years of schooling, in which he faces off against both a dark force called the Insidious Humdrum and his own possibly vampiric roommate, Baz.

In Cath’s version, Simon and Baz fall in love instead of (or maybe as well as) killing each other in the Grand Denouement, as events are trending towards in the source text from which Cath takes her inspiratioin.

Rainbow Rowell’s CARRY ON isn’t Cath’s fic. Nor is it the canon series conclusion Cath finally gets to read at the end of FANGIRL. Rather, it’s Rowell’s take on the idea of a young adult fantasy series ender that brings the protagonist into a new kind of conflict with the antagonist.

And it all happens without the previous seven books in the series, since no one who's liable to read CARRY ON really needs them. We all know how children's fantasy series work, so we can guess most of what's happened prior to this. Besides, Rowell slots in all the relevant details as the current book’s plot demands.

Review: Goldenfire by A.F.E. Smith

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley, at the author’s request.

GOLDENFIRE [Amazon] is the sequel to DARKHAVEN, a debut I enjoyed but had some issues with. I try to give any promising series at least two volumes, though, so when A.F.E. Smith reached out to see if I’d like a review copy of GOLDENFIRE, I jumped right on it.

Or as "on it" as I could, given my current mercurial reading mood. It took me almost two months to start the book, but once I did I crammed it into my eyeballs as fast my reading speed would allow.

GOLDENFIRE opens about three years after the events of DARKHAVEN. Ayla Nightshade has consolidated her rule while her partner, Tomas Caraway, takes care of her security arrangements, in large part via his new training program for fighters who want to become part of Ayla’s elite guard, the Helm. But when Caraway receives word that an assassin has targeted Ayla with the one weapon that may harm a Changer like her--a pistol--the latest crop of prospective Helm members becomes the weakest place in his line of defense.

And books like this one are why I stick to my two-volumes-or-bust policy. GOLDENFIRE is so. Frickin’. Good.

Really. Smith has taken everything I liked about DARKHAVEN and ramped it up the max, even as she challenges established (and overdone) fantasy tropes. GOLDENFIRE takes a decidedly modern view of the genre, but reading it gave me the same thrill I experienced as a youngster encountering adult-marketed fantasy for the first time.

Review: The Vengeful Half by Jaclyn Dolamore

Review copy provided by the author via NetGalley. In the interests of full disclosure, be aware I beta read an early version of this book.

THE VENGEFUL HALF [Amazon] is veteran author Jaclyn Dolamore’s first venture into self-publishing. She’s released five novels through Bloomsbury and Disney Hyperion, but chose a different path for her new series so she could have greater control over each volume’s release schedule, packaging, and bonus content, as she wrote about in greater detail on her blog.

The book centres on sixteen-year-old Olivia, an exile from the Hidden Lands adjoining Earth. Olivia and her mother, Adelise, live in America so’s to avoid the man Adelise cursed after he destroyed her husband, but their quiet life gets a whole lot more exciting when an intriguing boy from their homeland tracks them down.

Alfred inherited Adelise’s curse when his gangster grandfather died. He’s been blind ever since; something his parents would very much like to rectify, against Alfred’s wishes. No sooner has he voiced his request, though, than a rival faction whisks in and abducts Adelise. Desperate to help her mother, Olivia follows Alfred into the Hidden Lands--and discovers her own terrifying past in this unfamiliar world of dark magic and strange delights.

Ooh, friends, this was awesome! I began it the very moment it hit my ereader, other obligations be damned, and only reluctantly emerged until I’d reached the final page. It made me giggle, it made me cry, and it gave me a fascinating new sphere to explore.

Y’all know how much I love poking around in a well-built world.

Review: Downfall of the Gods by K.J. Parker

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Before we go any further, you ought to know DOWNFALL OF THE GODS is the latest Subterranean Press novella from K.J. Parker. It’s available in a signed, limited edition of 1000, rendering it unlikely to show up on your local bookstore's shelves. Likewise, your library may choose to allocate their funds elsewhere¹.

This can make them difficult for the casual browser to track down, but worry not! Subterranean's limited editions are always available through the publisher's website, with copies available (but not, I believe, 100% guaranteed) on Amazon, too. The price point is high, but if you’re a book collector and authorial uber-fan these editions are well worth your consideration. Subterranean uses beautiful binding techniques to turn beautiful paper and beautiful cloth (or leather) into beautiful books that feel good in the hand and look great on a shelf.

They sometimes sell out during the preorder period, too, which is why I'm reviewing this one so far in advance of its March 31st release date. I want the interested parties among you to have a proper shot at it.

If you’re less of a collector, your entertainment budget is small, or you use a screen reader, Subterranean usually releases their exclusive publications as affordably-priced ebooks a year or so after the limited editions have sold out. It means waiting (and waiting until you’re Stateside, in some cases, as many of the books aren’t licensed for digital sale outside the US), but it renders the stories accessible to anyone with a computer and $3-6 to spare.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about DOWNFALL OF THE GODS itself.

Review: Commercial Suicide by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie et al

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

COMMERCIAL SUICIDE [Amazon | The Book Depository | comiXology] is the third volume of THE WICKED + THE DIVINE. You’ll enjoy it so much more if you’ve read the first two volumes that I’ll strongly urge the newcomers you to take a step back and start with THE FAUST ACT and FANDEMONIUM before you even consider reading this one. Comics are naturally structured so you can get something out of a single issue, if that's all you've got on hand, but THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is a puzzle series from top to toe. It encourages readers to question the premise on every level as they assemble the wider picture for themselves. That’s a tough trick to perform if you don’t have all the pieces in front of you.

While the text gives us enough clues that we can easily engage in rampant speculation and draw some damned good conclusions, concrete confirmation is slow in coming. Even the definite answers to the questions we’ve been asking for multiple issues bring a slew of new questions along with them, giving the reader another reason to want to view the whole thing in its entirety. THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is fascinating and interactive; flashy and entertaining on the surface, but with a deeper core for those who choose to explore it.

Not unlike fandom itself. Hmmmm.