Review: South of Nowhere

South of Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Colter Shaw returns for his fifth Jeffery Deaver novel in a storyline that might just be too high budget for the CBS series adaptation Tracker, unless they saved that budget for a season premiere or finale. Oh, and some of the details about Colter’s family wouldn’t be able to be incorporated into the show anyway, since the show is definitely taking its own path in that regard. Here, however, Deaver presents a book that plays out like a disaster movie crossed with an actually good Yellowstone that makes its points about natural rights and Indigenous rights without hiding under a veneer of right wing rhetoric. Though it stretches credulity that Colter’s mother can speak the nearly extinct Ohlone language well enough to leave a voicemail for Mrs. Petaluma, an Indigenous woman who refuses to leave her home even when there’s a flood almost certainly coming, Deaver does do a great job acknowledging the Native peoples of Northern California, particularly the Miwok who are the true custodians of this land. (The exact location of Hinowah doesn’t really match most actual geography, but it’s definitely Miwok land up in the Sierra Nevada somewhere - my headcanon places it between Truckee and Susanville.) Coming from the same series that skewers urban California corporate politics in a previous book, here Deaver takes his lens to rural California to examine water rights, real estate terrorism, and Indigenous land rights long ignored after centuries of broken treaties and genocide.

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Review: His Face Is the Sun

His Face Is the Sun by Michelle Jabès Corpora
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is for sure a serious candidate for my favorite book of the year, and will at least stay in the top 5 if it doesn't outright hit the number one spot. An expansive high fantasy set in a fictional kingdom inspired by ancient Egypt (the author is herself of Egyptian descent and took inspiration from stories passed down by her father and her grandparents), with four protagonists in different social classes, each one with a distinct voice and story arc...it's a long and sprawling book, but it's for this that we read top tier fantasy, and this is some S-tier material up there with the likes of Bardugo in her heyday and Chakraborty in particular. And with Sourcebooks giving it a lovely physical package with elaborate sprayed edges, it looks the part and plays it to perfection. No spoilers - hell, go into this book with as little foreknowledge as possible. If any book deserves a well-packed hype train full of passengers, this is it.

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Review: The Gate of the Feral Gods

The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Stay the fuck away from gods.”

It’s so odd how this series, for all it’s been a hit, fluctuates in quality for me from book to book. I gave the first two books 3 stars (really the first was a 2.5 rounded up), and then the third book started what I thought would be an upward trend. But now here comes the fourth book and fifth dungeon and we’re back down to three stars again. I think a huge part of it is because I was expecting a lot more elemental shenanigans with four themed segments in this dungeon, but Dinniman spent a hell if a long time with the gnomes and only then jumped to the sands, and finally the sub…and when this book is pushing 600 pages already, it really starts getting stuck in the mud and making me question why this series is so popular again to begin with. But that sands segment with its Indiana Jones stylings is what keeps my interest the most, in part because it feels like it’s where this book delivers on its promise best. Not to mention the increasingly bonkers nature of the game’s AI, reflecting how if our world is indeed a simulation, the gods who made it must be crazy. Or feral. And no wonder the rest of the gods would prefer their isolation. But yes, while this book was a swing and a near miss for me, I’ll still be reading the fifth book in short order.

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Review: The Tainted Khan

The Tainted Khan by Taran Matharu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Matharu returns to his first series of adult fantasy with Jai striking out on his own and finding his way to the Steppefolk, to whom his true people are connected, in hopes of ultimately bringing down the Sabine Empire that destroyed his family and countless others. In this sense, it’s like if Dune Part Two shed its sci fi elements to become Steppe Part One. The book noticeably dials down its predecessor’s litRPG elements, though not completely, especially not when Jai retains his soulbound connection to the sweet and fierce dragon Winter. That said, the fantasy politicking ramps up to compensate as we delve deeper into the world of the Steppefolk and various associated tribes. And while they’re somewhat predictable, the big twists on which this book turns (particularly the very last one) set the stage for what I expect could be an epic conclusion in the upcoming third book…

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Review: Coldarius: The Origin of Gallium

Coldarius: The Origin of Gallium by D.L. Hannah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The prequel to Platirius follows a character originally from the chilly but ironically more hospitable world of Coldarius, chronicling the rise of the dreaded King Dubian (among other important events) through the eyes of one of the best and brightest on the planet - Gallium, a gifted youth in many ways. Seeing him on the cover (humorously enough, to me, his cover model resembles a coworker of mine) really makes it hit home how much of an ideal MaleForm he is, and I don’t just mean his high attractiveness. I mean how intelligent and thoughtful he is, and how much he cares for those whom his alien people might otherwise overlook (especially humans, whom Dr. Ezra Barrios has seen at their worst while witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust.) And then, of course, there’s some brief glimpses into Dubian’s POV, watching as his insecurity and self loathing slowly drive him mad. It’s a testament to Hannah’s skill that she almost makes you feel sorry for him. Almost. Because that ending, setting up the back half of this duology, reminds us that there’s a reason why he was always the Greater Scope Villain of the original trilogy…

Coldarius: The Origin of Gallium

Review: Midnight in Soap Lake

Midnight in Soap Lake by Matthew J. Sullivan
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Unfortunately this one fell victim to the Goodreads hype machine and fell hard as hell. My hopes were high for this one - a sort of latter day Twin Peaks in a small Washington state town, but desert instead of forest, and imagine my surprise when I learned that Soap Lake was a real place. But for all the hype, this book’s pale, dusty imitation of Lynch (not to mention a watered down Night Vale) wound up being one of my biggest disappointments of the year so far. Abigail was a surprisingly flat and boring protagonist, and while Esme’s flashbacks spiced things up a little, it wasn’t enough to retain my interest. DNF, and seeing the spoilers, that was the right call.

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Review: The Last Hero

The Last Hero by Linden A. Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lewis concludes their debut trilogy at great length, though I’m pretty sure this book was printed on thinner paper so it’d look a little less 600 pages long. Like its predecessor, it achieves that length by meandering a lot over its course, with its multiple POV’s, though it does make quick work of bringing back one who appeared to have died at the end of Book 2. But of course not, as I suspected almost immediately given this genre and subject matter. The ending reminds me a tad bit of that of The 100, though much less rushed and (despite its heavy rooting in AI crap) still more organic. To this trilogy, I now bid ave atque vale at last.

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Review: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”They will not break me. Fuck them all. They will not break me.”

Okay, I have to admit it…now we’re cooking. The third book in this series goes to the fourth dungeon, an immensely complicated railway network called the Iron Tangle, where it really doesn’t help to have a map because it’d probably have too many dimensions for humans to perceive. As it is, while Dinniman does provide a rudimentary sketch about 300-some odd pages in, it only serves to emphasize just how impossibly wild and out of control the world building is going to get. It’s a beast of a book, but it’s validating my status as a passenger on the hype train now, when I was almost ready to give up after Book 1 disappointed me. And the promise of four elemental themed dungeons in one level for the next book…let’s just say I can see why that one has a longer wait at the library than either of its two predecessors combined.

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Review: Carl's Doomsday Scenario

Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The second book of Dungeon Crawler Carl steps up the game in the third level of the dungeon, here presented as “the Over City,” resembling Vegas in a lot of ways (especially with its faux open air setup like Fremont Street), but built as one of several layers of a giant old volcano. Also like Vegas, there’s a lot of sex workers to go around, with Carl and Princess Donut having to contend with a cavalcade of dead prostitutes, as well as a few live ones with potentially dangerous effects (one such moment being the source of Princess Donut’s infamous complaint about Carl having an erection at the worst possible time.) The writing style is a bit improved since we no longer have to worry about introducing Carl and Princess Donut or most other aspects of this dungeon series, but overall it’s still the same dumb fun and high action as its predecessor, with a few more moments of social commentary to spice things up.

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Review: Dungeon Crawler Carl

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There’s definitely something in the air in Washington state, with indie SFF authors getting the right amount of attention to hit it big. Repping Eastern Washington in this regard is Spokane’s Travis Baldree and his Legends & Lattes world, and now for Western Washington, there’s Matt Dinniman of Gig Harbor hitting it so big with Dungeon Crawler Carl that Ace bought up the seven books already published and have reissued them all in hardcover.