Review: A Machine Divine

A Machine Divine by Derek Paul
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Derek Paul gives us one of the finest works of fantasy in quite a while, with more than a touch of sci fi in the DNA as well. Almost Miyazaki like in its setting, with zeppelins and genetic experimentation and World War style chemical weaponry, it’s a little bit steampunk, a little bit biopunk, and a lotta bit awesome indie storytelling. Asher is me and I am Asher (if I’d been fortunate enough to go to college out of town, that is.) So far this one looks to be standalone, but I really do hope to see more stories in this universe - it’s just too good an opportunity to waste.

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Review: The Rot

The Rot by Siri Pettersen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first book in this trilogy promised a huge shakeup for Book 2 with its diabolical cliffhanger ending, and now here we are on that second book with a distinctly divided narrative. Rime's POV keeps one side of the story rooted in the ymish world where the series began, but Hirka is now stuck in modern day Europe - England, to be exact. Though Hirka does quickly adapt to the strange ways of the modern world, it was her story that was the most interesting part of this book, because it plays out so differently from most other fantasy stories (there's a reason why I still have a soft spot for the 2013 Sleepy Hollow TV series, despite how off the rails the show became in the worst ways as it went on.) Whereas Rime's story in Ym is...quite honestly, boring in comparison, and distracting from the freshness of what's happened to Hirka. And with Urd all but gone from the picture, there's not even a villain to love to hate. But I'll be generous and give this one a 2.5 rounded up to 3, if only for Hirka's storyline...and for yet another terrifying cliffhanger guaranteeing that I'll be seeing this trilogy through.

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Review: The Faithless

The Faithless by C.L. Clark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second book in this planned trilogy proves to be full of surprises, especially for a reader like me who had expected Clark to follow the Court of Fives fantasy-decolonial playbook pretty closely. But also, the way Clark wrote Luca harked back so much to Helene in An Ember in the Ashes, a very complex character ethnically linked to the colonizers but wanting to do better for her legacy, that I shouldn't have been so surprised by how this book progressed after all. No one ever said decolonization was easy, especially for people like Luca and Touraine, representing both sides and doing their damnedest to push for peace, no matter how difficult it is. Adding to those difficulties, of course, are Luca's uncle, the Balladairan regent who refuses to step aside, and the constant wicked machinations of assorted Balladairan nobles, and the book's general emphasis on the price of magic and how that differs between nations. Touraine has already had to know some of that cost in terms of Qazāli magic, and Balladairan magic, long banned because of its barbaric side, is starting to make a pretty sinister comeback...but perhaps there's no more sinister comeback than the force that rears its ugly head at the very end of this book. So now to wait even longer for Clark to finally come out with Book 3...

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Review: The Unbroken

The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

C.L. Clark at one point wrote an article for Tor.com challenging the trope of the "butch martyr" in SFF, citing specific examples of Gideon the Ninth and The Traitor Baru Cormorant. This, then, is her extended challenge to that trope, with lesbian leads and their complicated dynamics - but also adding to that complication, the colonial setting, heavily inspired by North Africa under French imperial rule (Touraine is Qazāli, analogous to Moroccan or Algerian but forced to deny her true nationality in the colonial armed forces, while Luca is Balladairan, which is all but straight up French just like Aquitaine in Heidi Heilig's For a Muse of Fire.) Based on the acknowledgments section, Clark really did her research with French and Moroccan institutions alike, and the setting and themes remain as urgent and timely as ever today. I wasn't as invested in the characters, though. I could suspect that there'd be a certain Court of Fives playbook of decolonization for them to follow...but the ending was a huge surprise, setting up some twists to lead into a second book that I'm hoping will play out a little more in the style of An Ember in the Ashes, with characters whose complexities makes them even more worth rooting for.

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Review: Odin's Child

Odin's Child by Siri Pettersen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found the second book in this series available for only one dollar at the Friends of the Library room in one of the libraries in Vancouver, and as it happened, the same library had the first book in the series available to request. But only the first book. Oh well, it looked interesting and different, so I bought that second book and put it aside while waiting to pick up and read the first book. This one is set in a distant fantasy world heavily inspired by the Norse legends and lands of old - a grim, cold land with unrelenting chills natural and supernatural alike, and everybody loves to swear by blind bats and crones. It switches back and forth between a set of three distinct POV's, some heroic, some villainous - Urd, the primary villain, actually proves the most entertaining because of his love-to-hate factor. While this book is a real slog to get through at over 600 pages of constant darkness, it's the majorly surprising ending that really changes everything, and validates the (one) dollar I spent to purchase that second book for sure.

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Review: The Legacy of Yangchen

The Legacy of Yangchen by F.C. Yee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, it's pretty safe to say that for a legacy, Yangchen doesn't leave one nearly as iconic as many of the franchise's other Avatars - especially the likes of Kyoshi, Roku, and of course Aang and Korra. But with the conclusion to her duology, it's pretty clear that she's nobody's fool, although she has to put up with a lot more interpersonal conflict than Yee had previously depicted in the Kyoshi novels. Even after a nasty betrayal, she has no choice but to realign with an old friend. But as an Air Nomad and a woman, she still has to really fight to show her strength - tellingly, even though this is well before the point in time where the Fire Nation committed genocide against the Air Nomads, the action scenes in this book still feature much more of the other types of benders, and disproportionately few airbenders. I guess that's a point Yee is looking to make throughout the history of these Chronicles - because hell, the Kyoshi novels were light on airbending too now that I think about it. Hard to say where Yee will go next, but maybe we'll get young Avatar Szeto? Or even Avatar Kuruk, though I imagine any books about him would be tragic as hell...

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Review: Defiant

Defiant by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This hasn't been my favorite Sanderson series - hell, it started off with one of my least favorite books of his, since Skyward felt so derivative of Ender's Game until a last minute twist or two. It did improve over time, with Cytonic in particular standing out for its sheer weirdness, but then this book comes along and returns to a more basic style and storyline. It's a bit like Cytonic was the Last Jedi of this universe...but thankfully this book isn't a Rise of Skywalker situation. It's not my favorite Sanderson book, and this will never be my favorite Sanderson series, but I'd say he does a pretty good job of sticking the landing and wrapping up all the story threads for Spensa, M-Bot, Jorgen, and the like. I imagine he'll want to focus a lot more going forward on his epic fantasy bread and butter with Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive, but Sanderson isn't quite done with this world yet - it looks, though, like Janci Patterson will really take over the reins on the sequel, Skyward Legacy. To which I say - sorry, Star Trek, Dragonsteel promised a space-themed Legacy series first.

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Review: Divine Rivals

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Normally I'm leery as hell when it comes to BookTok hype - Fourth Wing, anyone? - but this book lives up to the level of attention it's been getting these last few months. A little less spicy than most romantasy offerings, enough that Fort Vancouver Regional Library shelves it pretty confidently as YA instead of adult (or even NA, which is where I'd really categorize it myself), but it's definitely a hell of a lot more inky and smoky, befitting its setting in a steampunk-like world where our main characters work in an old-timey newsroom and wind up covering the distant wars fought between human proxies for a couple of feuding gods. This book is billed as Shadow & Bone meets Lore, but I'd consider it much less Lore and much more Howl's Moving Castle, with a dash of Legend of Korra as well due to the feuding gods being oddly reminiscent of Raava and Vaatu. And while the enemies-to-lovers trope (so common these days, as we all know) makes Iris and Roman have a certain Reylo-like feel to them at times, their story progression feels a lot more grounded and realistic - and again, less spicy, though even Ross does highlight a certain chapter in her dedication, and for good reason. Now to wait on the long waitlist again to finally get around to the sequel...

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Review: The Innocent Sleep

The Innocent Sleep by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"'I hate prophecy,' muttered Ginevra. 'It's never a clear set of steps. It's like trying to assemble an IKEA bookshelf using an instruction booklet that's been translated from Swedish to Japanese to English without a human double-checking the translations.'

Reminding me of how Jim Butcher surprised the readers of The Dresden Files in 2020 with a double feature of novels, Peace Talks and Battle Ground, is the latest pair of novels in Seanan McGuire's signature October Daye series. This time, though, she takes a leaf out of her InCryptid books instead by switching to an all new POV, a first for a full-length October Daye novel.