Genre: Fantasy

Review – Cold Clay

Posted November 28, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Cold Clay

Cold Clay

by Juneau Black

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 208
Series: Shady Hollow #2
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

It's autumn in Shady Hollow, and residents are looking forward to harvest feasts. But then a rabbit discovers a grisly crop: the bones of a moose.

Soon, the owner of Joe's Mug is dragged out of the coffeeshop and questioned by the police about the night his wife walked out of his life—and Shady Hollow—forever. It seems like an open-and-shut case, but dogged reporter Vera Vixen doesn't believe gentle Joe is a killer. She'll do anything to prove his innocence ... even if it means digging into secrets her neighbors would rather leave buried.

Juneau Black’s Cold Clay is another reasonably cosy mystery in the same vein as the first book: if you didn’t enjoy that, then you won’t find yourself charmed by this one, and if you did enjoy the first one, it’s likely your thing unless the conceit is wearing thin for you already. For me, it wasn’t: I was ready to suspend my disbelief once more, readily engage with the world in which a raven runs a bookshop and a moose a café, and get mildly outraged that the police bear would arrest a hard-working honest moose.

If that all sounds ridiculous, it may not be for you, but the book treats it as obvious (aside from a brief introductory page in which it advises not to get caught up on the how of it all), and it doesn’t get played as ridiculous. Really it’s just about people, except they happen to have some animal traits. Here and there I was annoyed that they didn’t use their animal traits a bit more (flying’s all very well, but some of you have noses, why did nobody ever hunt down a quarry by scent?), but mostly I just suspended my disbelief and settled in to enjoy.

I say it’s a “reasonably” cosy mystery because… I’m never entirely sure where the boundaries are on this one. Murder seems, by definition, pretty uncosy — but a lot of mystery fiction is really about that closure at the end, and saying “everything is going to be okay now”, which is profoundly cosy. Your mileage may vary, but I think this one qualifies.

As far as the actual plot goes, once again I was a bit ahead of the game and identified the culprit quickly, but watching Vera get there was entertaining as far as it goes. I could’ve done without the relationship drama between Orville and Vera — really, kids, just communicate! But all in all, I enjoyed myself once more, and quickly grabbed the next book in the series, the short stories, and the fourth book as well for good measure. I’m having fun.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Shady Hollow

Posted November 23, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Shady Hollow

Shady Hollow

by Juneau Black

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 208
Series: Shady Hollow #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

The first book in the Shady Hollow series, in which we are introduced to the village of Shady Hollow, a place where woodland creatures live together in harmony — until a curmudgeonly toad turns up dead and the local reporter has to solve the case.

Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it leads. As she stirs up still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and discovers that additional lives are in jeopardy.

Vera finds more to this town than she ever suspected. It seems someone in the Hollow will do anything to keep her from solving the murder, and soon it will take all of Vera’s cunning and quickness to crack the case.

Juneau Black’s Shady Hollow fell into my hands right when I needed something to restore my faith that I actually enjoy reading and don’t just do it because I always have. In theory I was still fascinated by books, but in practice everything seemed a bit tedious — and then I came across Shady Hollow from someone’s Top Ten Tuesday blog post, and decided… I’ll just give it a chance.

In the end, it’s basically a mystery story like so many others… except that the characters are all animals. Our heroine is a fox, the police detective is a bear, the medical examiner is a snake, and the guy who sells everyone coffee is a moose. If you stop too long to wonder about it, you’ll get jolted out of the story — how does a raven turn the pages of a book, or a moose serve coffee? But you can just settle in and enjoy what there is, and the way the animals’ abilities occasionally give things a bit of flavour (like Lenore’s ability to fly), and the way the various different animals interact.

(And of course, of course, a beaver runs the sawmill. Of course.)

In the end, the mystery didn’t surprise me much, and I was a bit disappointed that while abilities like flight are used, it doesn’t mention scent at all. Vera’s a fox! There’s surely some degree of ability to track there — and Orville too!

But mostly I just had fun, and breezed straight through the book, and felt immensely grateful it fell into my paws — sorry, hands — right now.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Three Kings

Posted November 20, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Three Kings

Three Kings

by Freydís Moon

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 154
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Ethan Shaw — lighthouse keeper and local witch — lives a charmed life in his chilly, coastal hometown. Blessed with a flourishing garden and a stable livelihood, Ethan can’t complain. But when his husband, Captain Peter Vásquez, brings home a wounded leopard seal after an impromptu storm, Ethan is faced with a curious situation: caring for a lost selkie named Nico Locke.

As Ethan struggles with the possibility of being infertile, insecurities surrounding his marriage, and a newly formed magical bond with a hostile, handsome selkie, his comfortable life begins to fracture. But could breakage lead to something better?

With autumn at their heels and winter on the horizon, Ethan, Peter, and Nico test the boundaries of a new relationship, shared intimacy, and the chance at a future together.

Freydís Moon’s Three Kings is a m/m/m romance where one of the protagonists (the character we follow most closely) is a trans man. Just to be clear up front since I think some people would find this difficult to read (for a bunch of reasons), the novella focuses partly on Ethan’s problems with conceiving, after months of trying to start a family with his husband Peter, and with his feelings of worthlessness as a result.

It also involves a selkie called Nico who is bad-tempered and distrustful, and can’t entirely be blamed for it, since he’s injured due to being caught in Peter’s nets. Ethan is a witch and uses his power to bring Nico back to life, forging a connection between the two of them — and over the following days, as Nico heals, another connection begins to grow. What’s enjoyable is that Peter and Ethan’s relationship is rock-solid, and they don’t bring in Nico as some kind of fix for their problems: they’ve got that covered, and this is just about their connection with Nico, as Nico, not as a stop-gap or a patch or anything like that.

It’s also worth noticing that there’s some dubious consent here — while everyone’s into one another and it seems inevitable that they’re going to explore it, they also accidentally take a magical aphrodisiac. They’re all happy about it and there are no regrets, but that’s an important theme here that I wouldn’t want someone to be startled by.

In any case, I found the book smuttier than I’d have liked, not because I’m being a prude, but because it feels like that slightly took the place of the three of them working through their awkwardnesses, getting to know each other, and forging something based on their personalities. There are hints that it can happen, that it will happen… but it doesn’t really happen here.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Yellow Jessamine

Posted November 18, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Yellow Jessamine

Yellow Jessamine

by Caitlin Starling

Genres: Fantasy, Horror
Pages: 140
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Powerful shipping magnate Evelyn Perdanu lives a tight, contained life, holding herself at a distance from all who would get close to her. Her family is dead, her country is dying, and when something foul comes to the city of Delphinium, the brittle, perilous existence she's built for herself is strained to breaking.

When one of her ships arrives in dock, she counts herself lucky that it made it through the military blockades slowly strangling her city. But one by one, the crew fall ill with a mysterious sickness: an intense light in their eyes and obsessive behavior, followed by a catatonic stupor. Even as Evelyn works to exonerate her company of bringing plague into her besieged capital city, more and more cases develop, and the afflicted all share one singular obsession: her.

Panicked and paranoid, she retreats to her estate, which rests on a foundation of secrets: the deaths of her family, the poisons and cures that hasten the dissolution of the remaining upper classes, and a rebel soldier, incapacitated and held hostage in a desperate bid for information. But the afflicted are closing in on her, and bringing the attention of the law with them. Evelyn must unearth her connection to the spreading illness, and fast, before it takes root inside her home and destroys all that she has built.

Caitlin Starling’s Yellow Jessamine is a horror novella, following a young woman who fell heir to her family’s estate and business after the tragic deaths of all her family. Evelyn Perdanu likes to tightly control her life, managing the business around the war that will all too soon come to her home, and managing her household according to her own (slightly eccentric) needs. Her solace is her garden, where the things she grows can both heal and harm.

Slowly, the extent of what she does becomes clear — in response to the sudden appearance of something like a new plague, which leaves people empty and catatonic, after a brief period of total obsession with Evelyn. It’s all very creepy and tense, both with the plague and with the fear of the enemy and the eventual death of the town, and the fear of being found out for what she’s done.

Where it failed for me is that Evelyn is hard to pity, since she’s ruthless despite her fragility. She thinks nothing of blinding a man, even as she’s supposed to be nursing him to health. Poison is an answer that comes easily to her hand. It’s hard to feel sorry for her — for me at least — given how culpable she is. Points for atmosphere, but the character didn’t work for me: just a step too far into her own private madness to ever seem sane and worth investing in as a reader.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Tread of Angels

Posted November 11, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Tread of Angels

Tread of Angels

by Rebecca Roanhorse

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 201
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Celeste, a card sharp with a need for justice, takes on the role of advocatus diaboli, to defend her sister Mariel, accused of murdering a Virtue, a member of the ruling class of this mining town, in a new world of dark fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse.

The year is 1883 and the mining town of Goetia is booming as prospectors from near and far come to mine the powerful new element Divinity from the high mountains of Colorado with the help of the pariahs of society known as the Fallen. The Fallen are the descendants of demonkind living amongst the Virtues, the winners in an ancient war, with the descendants of both sides choosing to live alongside Abaddon’s mountain in this tale of the mythological West.

I really enjoyed Tread of Angels. I was probably only partly on board, right up until the end, because it felt like the main character (Celeste) was being a bit stupid about something that was right in front of her face. It felt like everything was going to be just a bit too predictable — enjoyable, but not something that would stick in my mind. And then, at the end… consequences.

In the end, I still can’t give it five stars, because holy crap, Celeste, how are you so stupid? And how do you keep taking such terrible advantage of everyone around you? It’s a wonder you’ve managed any friends at all… That part didn’t quite make sense to me, because the profound selfishness of Celeste made me wonder how her friends hadn’t seen it.

But something about the ending surprised me; I don’t want to say too much, but it made me re-evaluate a certain character and decide that he probably was more interesting than I’d initially written him off as. The book from his point of view certainly would’ve been something.

In the end, it strikes a sad note, but it works really well.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Undertow

Posted November 3, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Undertow

Undertow

by Jordan L. Hawk

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Romance
Pages: 90
Series: Whyborne & Griffin #8.5
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Shy secretary Maggie Parkhurst knows there’s nothing special about her. She’s neither sorceress, nor fighter, nor scholar. What could she possibly have to offer Persephone, the chieftess of the inhuman ketoi — and the woman Maggie’s fallen in love with?

After Maggie’s friend Irene goes missing under mysterious circumstances, she has no choice but to turn to Persephone for help. When the trail leads to a shadowy acting troupe, they discover a plot that stretches much farther than a single vanished woman.

But when a dark truth is revealed, Maggie must choose between a man from her past… and the impossible yearnings of her heart.

Undertow gives us the story of Dr Whyborne’s secretary, Maggie, and her friendship with his sister, Persephone. It’s a short one, but it has a nice action sequence, and shows us a slightly different side of Widdershins society.

I do think it’s funny that Maggie still hasn’t worked out that Whyborne’s in a relationship with Griffin. All the signs are there, she sees them, and… doesn’t clock on.

It’s nice to spend time with a character other than Whyborne, and also to see Maggie find happiness instead of mooning after him. I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed Persephone’s efforts to woo Maggie. Dead squid, indeed.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Sacraments for the Unfit

Posted October 29, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Sacraments for the Unfit

Sacraments for the Unfit

by Sarah Tolmie

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories
Pages: 146
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic brought out the ritualist in many of us. In this collection of contemporary weird short fiction, a variety of different persons and beings try to fill up their days in varying states of isolation and mystery, real or imaginary. An angel outlives the Apparat that used to employ him; a deity complains about no longer feeling seen; a museum curator living alone begins to inexplicably alter; a medievalist suffering from vision loss gets into a strange relationship with the ghost of the codicologist M. R. James; enigmatic objects begin to work themselves out of the ground by the grave of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, prompting scholarly speculation. Sacraments For the Unfit is a series of vignettes about the transformations that can happen while staying in place.

I can see why this book has been compared with Ursula Le Guin’s work. It had the same quality I have with some of her more impenetrable stories where I just don’t quite “get it”. Some of them seem to require some outside knowledge for more clarity — a little knowledge of M.R. James wouldn’t hurt, or Wittgenstein, which is quite the ask (I know a little about James, almost nothing about Wittgenstein).

In the end I don’t regret reading it, but also it wasn’t quite 100% squarely my thing, if that makes sense. I’m eager to read more of Tolmie’s books and stories, though: I really liked The Fourth Island and All the Horses of Iceland.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Butcher of the Forest

Posted October 25, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Butcher of the Forest

The Butcher of the Forest

by Premee Mohamed

Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 160
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

At the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near—once someone goes in, they never come back out.

No one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe.

Received to review via Netgalley

The main character of this novella, Veris, once went into the forest to save a child. It’s no ordinary forest, and her journey is the only time anyone has been known to be successful in entering and leaving the forest, let alone bringing a lost child back. When the local Tyrant’s children go missing, he has her brought to him: she must go and retrieve his children, or he will kill her family.

Well, what choice does she have? It’s an interesting set-up, since she’s a middle-aged protagonist, and she’s full of aches and pains as she makes her way into the forest — and she’s no great witch, holds no great power to find her way, just a bit of knowledge and some luck. And the luck’s tenuous.

It’s a genuinely creepy story in that tense sort of way, with a lot of blank spots at the edge of the canvas of things we don’t really get to see/understand. The focus is on Veris’ journey, and her efforts to find the children, despite the sense that there’s so much more going on.

I found it enjoyable, though I’m still sort of letting it settle.

Rating: 4/5

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