Review: The Last Contract of Isako

The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I saw Fonda Lee speaking at Powell’s in Beaverton in 2023, on which day she announced that her next project would be this cyberpunk assassin thriller. Now that I’ve read the finished product, she acknowledges that it’s one of the most difficult projects she’s ever written, due to a lot of personal and professional changes. But it definitely meets the promise of the book she announced that day in Beaverton - a twisty, high octane, excellently built world with an aging ronin of the future confronting the very system that kept her employed all these years. It’s a weird blend of Looper and Altered Carbon, with a dash of Firefly if that had been written authentically Asian (Lee called out that show in Beaverton for its “flavortext” and lack of cultural authenticity.) If not for the second act switch to a certain annoying (yet plot-relevant) new POV running roughly in parallel with Isako in the first act, this would’ve gotten rounded up, but for me it’s a 4.5 rounded down to what Chef Ramsay would call “a very strong 4.”

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Review: Escape!

Escape! by Stephen Fishbach
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Leave it to a former Survivor castaway to write a story that darkly parodies the long running reality series, while insisting that none of it is based on real events…and yet, it clearly plays to superfans with Easter eggs galore, characters very obviously inspired by other real-life castaways, lots of factoids being dropped about the show (because while the show focuses on the fictional Endure and Escape!, Survivor also still exists in this universe), and especially the perceptions of outsiders. The obvious typecasting, production rigging certain incidents, the showrunner being desperate for reinvention of the game…if only Kent, the seasoned vet, could’ve gotten that first person POV instead of Beck, the producer. Fishbach gives it the old college try, but if I’m to read another book of his, I hope he tries something completely different.

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Review: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this one up because Barnes & Noble had it on display, and Veronica Roth was singing the praises of this book when I saw her at her Beaverton appearance on tour for Seek the Traitor’s Son. I didn’t really realize until I opened the book for the first time that it wasn’t just a straight up fantasy piece - it’s a western isekai with a young woman from modern day Austin who winds up in the world of her favorite fantasy series. In that sense it’s a bit similar to Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil, but this protagonist isn’t ill in the real world and happy to embrace a villainous role for her own pleasure. Instead, Maggie is a pretty ordinary young woman of good morals, and great knowledge of this world…or, at least, the two books that were published, whereas the third book is still vaporware after over a decade. There’s a lot going on here, but the story quickly makes an effort to streamline its focus onto Maggie navigating courtly politics and medieval bureaucracy alike, with less focus on the weird time loop that keeps her from dying, or on why the series was never finished. I bet those, however, will be in greater focus in the sequels.

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Review: She Knows All the Names

She Knows All the Names by Michelle Jabès Corpora
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The second book in the Throne of Khetara series is definitely at least the middle book of a trilogy, but it absolutely averts Middle Book Syndrome and keeps up the first book's sprawling momentum but good. Picking up where we left off with our four POV characters - and a fifth who appears only in sparing interludes - this book once again earns the same comparisons to Bardugo and Chakraborty as its predecessor, but also to Rebecca Roanhorse with an Ancient Egyptian version of Between Earth and Sky. Perhaps the biggest surprise to me is the ending, where a character death I didn't expect to see until the very end suddenly comes up, and leaves me wondering exactly what Corpora plans for the third and final book. Either way, that third and final book better happen, because this series just isn't getting the cultural love it deserves. Readers, don't let your souls be found wanting when they're weighed.

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Review: Downfall

Downfall by Marc J. Gregson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Marc J. Gregson completes his debut trilogy and proves himself, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a great successor to James Dashner’s formerly glowing reputation as the king of action packed YA dystopian adventures. (Veronica Roth is the empress, and Suzanne Collins is the overlord.) In a world where Uncle keeps his iron fist tighter than ever, birdshitting on the very society he rules, Conrad finally completes his training in intense, grueling fashion, leading up to his long awaited final battle - and since it comes almost at the very end of this book, and plays out like Gregson’s been brushing up on his Pierce Brown lately. (Well, his next book will be geared for adults, so…) To the world of Above the Black, I hereby bid ave atque vale.

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Review: Seek the Traitor's Son

Seek the Traitor's Son by Veronica Roth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

VRoth returns with her first full length novel since Poster Girl, and the first full length book since then to be starting a whole new series from the jump. She said she spent six years working on this one in between her other adult SFF novels and novellas, but it was what brought her the most joy, and it shows. Going back to the Battle Couple trope she so loved in her YA days in particular, with a sci-fi worldbuilding level reminiscent of Carve the Mark (though with alternate Earth nomenclature that reminds me of the works of Marie Lu and Victoria Aveyard in particular), and some space station drama and apocalyptic desert and mountain settings that feel ready to jump off the page and gain visualization on the silver screen. I was lucky to meet Roth herself again last night and get a signed copy of this book to grace my shelf, and hopefully soon the second will follow. But that might be a while given she’s got her new Sixth Faction duology on the way…

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Review: Weavingshaw

Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first in a new trilogy, Heba Al-Wasity's debut novel pairs very well with the works of her fellow hijabi fantasy writer Hafsah Faizal - particularly A Tempest of Tea and A Steeping of Blood, being that this book is set in a fantasy counterpart of Victorian England with a significant minority community of a MENA fantasy counterpart culture, the Algaarans. Though this book is less a vampire story about colonialism and more of a straight up gothic ghost story, it's no less great for it, with the pages flying fast in this compulsively readable atmosphere. I hope to see the second book drop as soon as possible, and that this series does maintain its original trilogy promise in a world increasingly dominated, for whatever reason, by duologies.

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