Posted May 11, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Babylon’s Ashes, James S.A. Corey
I don’t know if it’s in part the way I read it (quite spread out, not all at once), or just the sprawling nature of the series by this point, but this one did not come together well for me. It feels dark and uncompromising: people are awful to each other, and I have to be in the head of characters who do and think violent, dreadful things. Everything is bad, and there’s not much hope. That made this a very difficult read for me.
Part of the problem is the sprawling cast. There are ways it could be made tighter and still have the scope, like dropping some of the more-or-less unnecessary POV characters (whose names I barely remembered between appearances). On the one hand, putting Holden in the centre gives him too much credit and the book pushes against making him the Main Character for all of humanity… but this is a book, and sometimes that kind of thing can tighten things up and make it feel easier to get into.
I also have a question about something weird where I’m not sure if I missed something, or whether something actually weird happened, that I should really look back and find out…
The book brings us to an interesting place, it’s just also a pretty wretched place. Everyone is suffering, and even the Rocinante isn’t a safe home to return to where no harm will touch. And that makes sense, it’s realistic, but for me it was all maybe a little too grim.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, James S.A. Corey, SF/F
Posted May 10, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
The Navigating Fox, Christopher Rowe
Received to review via Netgalley
I really enjoyed The Navigating Fox, but I find myself not sure what to write about it. Let’s try to start at the beginning: this is a world where “voiceless” animals like the ones we know can be given human-like intelligence and voices. Quintus Shu’al is a navigating fox, the only one of his kind (at least, as far as we know or he knows). As the book opens, he’s being investigated for his part in the loss of a whole expedition he promised to guide to find a remedy for the Empress’ sickness.
It quickly becomes apparent that things aren’t what they seem, and that there’s a lot of scheming going on by various different parties, leading to Quintus guiding a whole cavalcade to the end of the world to close the gates of Hell (apparently).
The story runs two threads in parallel: the earlier journey, with the lost expedition, and the later journey to the gates of Hell. As those threads converge, we get to see more of the world — though there’d still be plenty more to learn if there were to be a follow-up, because it’s a pretty fascinating setting.
Despite the quirkiness of the idea of a book with talking animals, it’s not quirky in execution (for the most part, at least). It’s treated seriously, without taking itself too seriously, if you see what I mean.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Christopher Rowe, SF/F
Posted May 7, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo
Received to review via Netgalley
Cleric Chih returns to the Singing Hills abbey for the first time in this novella series, and finds things have changed: Cleric Thien, a beloved mentor, has died, and they’re just in time to participate in his memorial, and Almost Brilliant’s chick is growing fast and eager to meet them. Plus, there’s a pair of mammoths at the gates of the abbey, and some kind of quarrel growing up.
Homecoming can be strange, and Chih finds some of that difficult: a childhood friend is grown and even acting as the leader of the abbey, and the younger ones look up to them as an elder now. Almost Brilliant isn’t ready to travel with them again, and the abbey is strangely quiet (with everyone absent to go and record some fascinating uncovered previously-drowned ruins)… They have to navigate that and settle back down for a while, and try to figure out how to manage the whole mammoth situation (inasfar as that’s something they even ought to be managing).
It’s a lot, but as with the other novellas in this series, I loved it. We see a little more of the world, of all the stories those at the abbey gather and curate, and a little more now of where Chih comes from and what has shaped them. Especially fascinating to me, we learn a little more of the neixin, and meet several of them.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Nghi Vo, SF/F
Posted May 5, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments
Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher
Received to review via Netgalley
T. Kingfisher’s Thornhedge takes the story of Sleeping Beauty and bends it till it breaks, flipping things round to give us a different perspective. That massive thorny hedge makes a great defence — but what if it was keeping something in, rather than out? What if we really, really don’t want Sleeping Beauty to wake?
Toadling is a changeling, raised in Fairy and then sent back to her original parents to avert disaster. Fayette is wilful, powerful and destructive, and Toadling… well, she knows how to turn into a toad, and how to command water. She has minor magics, nothing like Fayette’s strength, but somehow she has to contain her and protect the world.
Into the familiar story comes a knight, as you’d expect — but he’s a pretty singular sort of knight, one rather more interested in books, and not entirely sure what to do with a sword. He’s drawn to Toadling and the way she’s trapped within the thorny hedge, and he’s determined to fix things. Somehow.
The friendship that grows up between Halim and Toadling is really sweet, and I love his gentleness and the warm humour around him. I raced through this and loved it; fans of Kingfisher’s work won’t be disappointed.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F, T. Kingfisher
Posted May 3, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Premonitions Bureau, Sam Knight
The study of things like psychic powers and premonitions is always fascinating. There’s a sense that so many of us want to believe in this sort of thing — the way the human brain insists that there must be a pattern behind circumstances. One can be fairly intellectually sure that there’s no such thing as precognition per se, and yet find it a little freaky that (say) a young girl would dream of her school being swallowed up by black stuff a couple of nights before she dies in the Aberfan disaster…
This book is all about digging into that, mostly through looking at the investigations and interests of John Barker, a British psychiatrist who tried to gather up premonitions and test them scientifically. He was sometimes a bit too credible, a bit too inclined to influence the data — but then, two of his clairvoyants (percipients, as he called them) predicted his death fairly accurately, and had a number of other surprisingly specific hits (such as predicting a train derailment).
The book mostly follows Barker, along with a few of his colleagues, trying to understand his attempts to study premonitions, and why he was so fascinated by the subject. Knight doesn’t attempt to come to any conclusions, just presents the facts as best as they can be known — though of course there’s always a chance someone massaged the facts to make a better story, whether it was Barker, one of his colleagues, or Knight himself.
There’s quite a bit of detail on the Aberfan disaster in the first 50 pages, by the way, which hit me where I live. If that disaster is particularly evocative for you, then read with care.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Sam Knight, science
Posted April 30, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Death on the Riviera, John Bude
Death on the Riviera isn’t one of the best of the British Library Crime Classics series, but it’s a solid one. Bude’s plots and writing tend to the workman-like, and his detective is mostly a blank with no real personality (though his subordinate had a bit more of a personality here, with his love affair with someone involved in the case).
All of which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this, because Bude’s books are absolutely archetypical for a certain period of crime fiction, and thus very relaxing. You know what to expect, and you get it — after a fair amount of puzzling things out, a few red herrings, and a dead end.
I have to admit, I missed a couple of the hints here, and had to flip back to see if I thought they were really telegraphed. Maybe not quite, there was one thing that isn’t really foreshadowed well (and I don’t think it would’ve given the game away to make it a little clearer), but it all comes together in the end.
If you’re looking for the best writing or the best plotting, this won’t be it! But it is solid for what it is, and exactly what I wanted (though E.C.R. Lorac delivers a similar experience with a better sense of place and character).
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Bude, mystery
Posted April 28, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Under the Smokestrewn Sky, A. Deborah Baker (Seanan McGuire)
Received to review via Netgalley
Under the Smokestrewn Sky continues and completes the story of Zib and Avery’s first travels through the Up-And-Under. I was pretty sceptical in beginning this journey, since it spun off Middlegame — a great book, don’t get me wrong, but not one I really wanted to see a sequel or spin-off for, somehow.
Still, the series is not very related to Middlegame‘s story, and is self-contained and quite different in tone. This final volume wraps things up, bringing Zib and Avery to their final destination. The language remains playful and reminiscent of Cat Valente’s voice in the Fairyland books, and mostly avoids being too much.
As for the story, well, there are certain things that I found really predictable and others that I hadn’t been expecting. The narration made light of the first part, pointing out that Niamh also saw it coming, so just played into the whole meta-textual bit there — but still, I was a little disappointed that it had been obvious to me for so long.
It’s a mostly satisfying end, though I have lot of questions about where the characters other than Zib and Avery go from there. I suppose there may be more, since the last pages mention that Zib and Avery do return to the Up-and-Under… and I shall read it eagerly if so.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Seanan McGuire, SF/F
Posted April 26, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Season of Monstrous Conceptions, Lina Rather
Received to review via Netgalley
I really liked Lina Rather’s previous novellas, so I leapt on this one even without reading what it was about. It follows Sarah Davis, an apprentice midwife who is more than a little uncanny herself, in a year when uncanny children are being born all over London. By chance, she meets Sir Christopher Wren’s wife, who is pregnant, and becomes her midwife — and thus gets drawn more and more into the strangeness, tugged between Sir Christopher’s ambitions for her uncanny powers, and those of the midwives she works with.
It’s an interesting setup, and I liked that the motivations of everyone had some justification behind them. Everyone thinks they’re a hero and doing the right thing, in their own head, and I could see that these characters did too.
As a novella, it doesn’t get into an enormous amount of depth with most of the characters, but Sarah is pretty clear, and her fledgeling relationship with Margaret, and the liminal world of almost-respectable, almost-unrespectable that she inhabits and struggles with.
I love Sisters of the Vast Black more, but I’m glad I picked this up!
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, horror, Lina Rather, SF/F
Posted April 23, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Thief in the Night, KJ Charles
I always enjoy KJ Charles’ less murdery books, and this novella’s a nice one. There’s not much of a supporting cast, just Miles and Toby, getting to know each other, getting past their hangups, and figuring out how to take a chance on each other. Toby’s a sweetie, and Miles is… somewhat incidentally grumpy — which is to say, not permanently grumpy by constitution, but in a terrible position and not sure how on earth to turn things around.
As always, I love Charles’ careful attention to issues of consent. It really doesn’t take much to show characters being aware of it and ensuring it, and it makes the situations so much more satisfying. You don’t end up thinking “ugh, but X was relying on Y for food to eat, so of course he couldn’t really say no” — because the characters realise that and work with it (or don’t, and later have to work with it, perhaps). It’s not some unspoken, unexamined grossness.
As a result, it’s easy to just enjoy Toby and Miles and how they find happiness together. I really liked Toby, and I really felt for the panic-stricken moments near the end… but of course, Miles comes to the rescue (I won’t spoil you as to how).
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, K.J. Charles, queer fic, romance
Posted April 21, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Twice Round the Clock, Billie Houston
Twice Round the Clock was pretty much what I expected of this series, which means it was pretty comforting. I knew nothing about the author, though she was somewhat famous in her time (for reasons other than being an author); I wonder how much that impacted the initial reception of the book.
As it goes, it’s a country house mystery with a somewhat closed circle of suspects (not a locked room mystery, and events make it clear that people can make it to the house, but most of the suspects are cooped up in the house due to an impressive thunderstorm). The victim is a rather awful man, and the author does well at making clear that he’s awful without ever doing anything that you can point to as being so very bad.
There’s quite a bit of melodrama, fainting ladies and spurious engagements and the like — not to mention poisons that can be smeared on a person or animal and kill them spontaneously at a pre-determined time later — but that’s pretty par for the course for a crime novel of the period, and enjoyable in its way.
One thing Houston did really well is the pacing: starting off with the discovery of the body, then winding the clock back to show us the preceding hours, and then ratcheting up the tension to the climax. With each chapter having a clock time, that does help to create the tension of the story.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: Billie Houston, book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, mystery
