Books 68-70
Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s funny. A friend told me I had to read this and two days later the publisher asked me for an unbiased review. Stars aligning. So much of this is right up my alley and I enjoyed it so much some of the world building strangeness didn’t much bother me (though it kept me from going for five stars)
Remington “Remy” Pendergast is the son of a duke (who you’ll want to bitchslap into next week) and a Reaper, a killer of vampires to keep the Queendom of Aluria safe. His biggest problem is the rest of the Reapers and most of the capital city of Elouvre hate and fear him thinking he’s a cambion/dhampire (used interchangeably) as his mother was killed and turned just as he was in the last month of gestation. He was cut from her body. Half the reason he’s a Reaper in spite of the hate he gets is he wants revenge for his mother’s death at the hands of the Night Court.
One of the biggest world building issues for me is the vampire political structure. It seems like some vampires are undead humans and others are born (so I assume that even undead they can procreate) The various vampire courts are murky at best in this and not exactly friends with each other nor with the humans. Two of the courts under the control of Xiaodan Song and Zidan Malekh respectively are attempting to make a peaceful alliance with Remy’s queen.
The big problem is Zidan and Remy have met on the field of battle after Remy nearly killed Zidan’s brother who Remy thinks has killed a young noblewoman who was at least nice to him. Circumstances throw them together as a new horror threatens everything and everyone. Some of the killed vampires are mutating into zombie like monsters that are nearly impossible to kill. Zidan is a scientist and confirms Remy’s father’s fears: these are created by science not nature.
And that takes me to the next world building weirdness. These people are capable of genomic studies and molecular genetics, genetic engineering and even develop mid-story PCR and DNA fingerprinting but they’re still using horse and buggy to get around. Science really doesn’t work that way but you know what? Remy, Zidan and Xiaodan are so engaging I didn’t really care that it seems very highly unlikely they developed genetic manipulation before they developed the combustion engine (what? I love steampunk so it’s not so unlikely I can forgive this scientific weirdness)
The upshot is Remy is sent with Xiaodan and Zidan to find out who is behind the Rot and stop them. Remy also hope that these two vampire lords can help him take out the Night Court who killed his mother. By the time I was twenty-five percent into the story, I was saying if this doesn’t end with Remy, Xiaodan and Zidan in a polyamorous relationship I’m going to be so disappointed. That’s the main plot, who created the Rot and why and the secondary plot is how Remy fits in with Xiaodan and Zidan vs his life as a Reaper and all the political rot his father is involved in.
It's actually a rather long novel but it doesn’t read like one. I galloped through this. Was I disappointed about the relationship with the three leads? Well you’ll just have to read and find out for yourself. It definitely wraps up most of the threads in this novel and sets up well for the next. I’ll be there for it.
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When Blood Lies by C.S. Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This time Sebastian and Hero are in France trying to track down his runaway mother who he finds dying after being flung off a bridge. The local police (of which France has more than one branch of) has no interest in the case, claiming that it’s a suicide. Sebastian of course is going to solve this himself and he hooks up with Vidocq who is a real person and an absolutely fascinating criminal turned crime solver who added so much to early police work.
Sophie, his mother, has been living in Paris with her long-time lover Maréchal Alexandre McClellan who fought with Napoleon but has now sworn allegiance to the newly restored Bourbon royals. The Bourbons are more interested in destroying all of Napoleon’s public works that were much needed and losing much favor of the French people who might just be hoping for the return of Napoleon. Naturally, Sophie is somehow wrapped up in Napoleon’s escape from Elba and his attempted coup.
And this bothered me. Lately Harris has been doing the same thing I stopped reading Anne Perry for: trying to hook everything into the politics of the time. I don’t care about that. I just want to read a good mystery. It doesn’t have to be tied heavily into the politics of the time though I can understand the temptation because that’s where historical research goes.
The part of the formula I’m really disliking is the family melodrama. I always hated it back when it was Sebastian and Kat. Now we have his ugly sister Amanda and I’m just waiting for this grandchild to be a boy and her try to grab Sebastian’s title for him (probably after Hendon passes on so not to humiliate him) And then we have what happened to Hero’s mother and what if her father’s newest baby is a boy? I hope it doesn’t go here but I can see it.
I was disappointed that Sebastian didn’t meet up with McClellan so that bit of family drama is still out there waiting to happen or not, given the political environment between their countries. I did like the mystery but if you stripped out the endless political stuff this would have been a very short story. I still liked it. It was well drafted but it might have got that fourth star out of pure nostalgia for the earlier days of this series before everything was hooked into the politics.
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Vinland Saga Omnibus, Vol. 12 by Makoto Yukimura
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Sigurd and Thorfinn have returned to Iceland (separately) to confront Halfdan and tie up all the dangling threads before we get to what I'm hoping is the end game: the trip to Vinland. A few years are time jumped here with Thorfinn getting a family life I didn't expect because there was not a great set up on the whole romance thing.
Recruiting people to his cause isn't going as well as Thorfinn would like. While there are plenty would are lured in by the promise of plenty of farm land away from war, most don't want to give up their weapons to go which is a prereq for Thorfinn to allow them on the boat. I get his premise. He wants to trade peacefully with anyone they might encounter there so they don't need weapons. Problem is humans don't work that way.
It's hard to imagine making this choice, going to a new country and leaving your family behind probably forever. So many have made that choice. My own grandparents but this is a thousand years more or less before my relatives gave it a shot.
As I said in the beginning I hope we're in the end game and the series is wrapping up. As much as I like Thorfinn as a character this series has hit some serious doldrums a time or two like with farmer/slave Thorfinn. We're right back there. Even though this is the end point of the whole thing for Thorfinn, it's not tremendously interesting or action packed.
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