Review: Ten Incarnations of Rebellion

Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The latest novel from Vaishnavi Patel shifts away from the ancient settings of the original Hindu legends which she typically adapts, in favor of a more modern but still historical (or, more accurately, alternate historical) setting that still takes inspiration from the same Hindu legends. In this new timeline, it's the 1960s going into the 1970s, and India remains a British colony decades past the point where she gained independence in real life, due in large part to the British stamping out Gandhi and other leaders of the independence movement with even greater violence. By this point in the timeline, the city we know as Mumbai has been burned down and rebuilt as British Kingston, with the colonizers pitting all the local ethnic and religious groups against each other...until such time as Kalki, Fausha, and their friends and families can slowly rise up and overthrow their oppressors. It's a slow burn, especially for a short book, but it's quickly become my new favorite of Patel's for numerous reasons.

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Review: These Vengeful Gods

These Vengeful Gods by Gabe Cole Novoa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gabe Cole Novoa brings us his latest dark YA fantasy, this time shifting away from his historical settings of the last few years (two books of piracy and magic, and his retelling of Pride and Prejudice with a transmasculine protagonist.) Now, he takes on the fantasy dystopian style, bringing in a lot of his stylistic hallmarks - queer-centric cast, Latin American inspired setting (not every character is Hispanic, but many of them are at least coded as such), sharp social commentary about class division and genocide (protagonist Crow being one of the last living descendants of Death, whom all the other gods betrayed out of fear), and also disabled rep, with Novoa incorporating elements of his own autoimmune disorder into Crow. I feel like this book will get a lot of comparisons to Aiden Thomas’s The Sunbearer Trials, but my comparison is that, having been disappointed with the second book of Thomas’s duology, this book gets right in one what Thomas couldn’t quite pull off in two. It’s a very worthy addition to Novoa’s bibliography, and while Crow is a new favorite of mine among his protagonists, Chaos takes the cake as my fave overall in this book, easily.

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Review: Badlands

Badlands by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The fifth Nora Kelly novel feels like a throwback to some of Preston & Child’s best scary stories, especially way back in their earlier days like in Still Life With Crows. It also verges on X Files territory, particularly with its emphasis on the ruins and artifacts of Indigenous peoples in New Mexico, from the Chaco to the Ancestral Pueblo to the Gallina, and of course the Navajo, with an old woman of that tribe getting a laugh out of Nora and Corrie’s clumsy attempts at speaking her language. Though they aren’t Native Americans, Preston & Child take great care to depict various tribal cultures past and present with sensitivity, which is more than I can say for the ultimate villains of this book. Without spoilers, let’s just say there really is a special hell for cultural appropriators and they deserve it.

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Review: Anji Kills a King

Anji Kills a King by Evan Leikam
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It starts with Exactly What It Says On The Tin, and builds from there. And where it builds is to Anji getting abducted by the Hawk, one of the five assassins tasked with protecting this land, except she's a crabby old lady past her prime physically. Mentally, though...she's gotta stay ahead of her fellow Menagerie members, especially if she's to claim the bounty on Anji all for herself. While this book is, for some reason, hyped as a piece of grimdark fantasy akin to Joe Abercrombie, it does one thing right that Abercrombie's always failed at for me - it's kept me interested in at least one character. Two, technically, but definitely one over the other. For some reason, while Anji is ostensibly the star of the show, Hawk is a far more interesting and dynamic character to me. That said, by the time this book ends, it's pretty clear that Anji is the true lead, and yet she's still part of something bigger for the second book to explore in greater detail...

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Review: A Burning in the Bones

A Burning in the Bones by Scott Reintgen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The trilogy ends with a tale as old as time: a plague comes, and those in power seek to weaponize it for their own ends. The in universe politics get quite complicated on this one, because no one knows who’s gonna get sick, who might be immune, and what the effects on society at large will be…except for the fact that there is going to be a seismic shift in power no matter what. And then there’s the dragons to think about, dragons that are supposed to be officially extinct, but they, like life in Ian Malcolm’s iconic line…uh, finds a way. While this book was a much slower read than its predecessors, it’s no less gripping for it, and Reintgen sticks the landing very well, and very unexpectedly too.

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Review: A Whisper in the Walls

A Whisper in the Walls by Scott Reintgen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second novel of Reintgen’s Waxways trilogy shifts away from dark academia in favor of a dark apprenticeship as Ren enters the service of House Brood, with the goal to take them down from within. Pretty classic setup, but there’s more to the story than that, as another family wronged by the Broods in the past, House Tin’Vori, prepares their own long game of revenge. Dahvid Tin’Vori, in particular, is a great anti-hero/anti-villain (really, he’s just morally extra gray here) with the ability to draw magical powers from tattoos, similarly to Adrian in Marissa Meyer’s Renegades series. But it also depends on the skill of the tattooist, and his current artist Cath really has her work cut out for her as she needs to get these tattoos just right for Dahvid. It’s another blazing fast read, but the finale’s gonna need to take its time to savor, due to its length and subject matter…

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Review: A Door in the Dark

A Door in the Dark by Scott Reintgen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first book in a YA fantasy trilogy that somehow slid under the radar despite coming from the same publisher that used to present all the Cassandra Clare books, from an author who’s long been skilled at sliding under the radar with good material. I happened to see the complete trilogy on a shelf at B&N, so my mission, and I choose to accept it, is to read them all. This first book is a very unusual combination of subgenres: dark academia and survival thriller. It also taps into the romantasy enemies to lovers trend a bit, but it’s my hope that these leads stay enemies in the end, because like a lot of such lead characters, they’re an anti-ship for me. In this case, purely because Ren has strong personal reasons for wanting to bring down Theo’s ill gotten gains. Luckily, I’ve already got Book 2 ready to start today.

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