Some short fiction reviews
But first, has anyone been following the current season of The 100? I have a number of episodes piled up and I can't bear to watch unless they've scored some significant victories so far. Anyone who could provide nonspecific information about this would be greatly appreciated.
KJ Charles, Wanted, a Gentleman: Edwardian romance. Theo runs a matrimonial newspaper, eking out a marginal living (and writing romances under a woman’s name on the side), while Martin is a freed slave on an errand of obligation/kindness to save his former master’s daughter from ruin. They fight crime, have sex, and fall in love.
Justina Ireland, Dread Nation: The zombie uprising interrupted the Civil War, which was put aside while everyone fought the dead. Now Negroes (nominally freed) and Indians are put on the front lines, with more or less preparation to fight depending on circumstance. Jane, whose mother is the mistress of a Southern plantation, is at a high-class training school, preparing to be a white lady’s attendant if she can only master etiquette as well as she wields a blade. But events in Baltimore, and her former beau, conspire to put her in lots more trouble. It’s a cracking read, even for someone like me who doesn’t like zombies in general-a great premise and Jane makes a wonderful, hard-headed heroine against great odds.
Justine Ireland, Promise of Shadows: Earlier YA by Ireland: Zephyr is one of the vaettir, a mixture of human and divine lineages, who can exist in both worlds. She’s sent to Tartarus for the murder of a god, and that’s before the story starts. It turns out that the reason that she could kill a god was that she has a forbidden power, and might be the prophesied savior of the vaettir from Hera’s genocidal aims. Also, she likes a cute boy who might be bad for her. It was ok, but there were pacing issues and it was actively hilarious that Zephyr spent more time angsting about the boy than about the potential end of the world-Ireland’s Dread Nation is a vast improvement.
T. Kingfisher, Bryony and Roses: An enjoyable retelling of Beauty and the Beast, substantially darker in some ways (especially with respect to the original Beauty) and lighter in others. Bryony is a gardener from a now-impoverished family; on her way back from getting some rutabagas, she encounters a manor where no manor should be. The manor is itself a character, with a different agenda than the Beast’s. I liked the changes that were worked on the basic story, including Bryony’s earthily realistic terror.
T. Kingfisher, The Wonder Engine: In this sequel, the suicide squad has reached the enemy city, and now they have to figure out where the Clockwork Boys come from and how to stop them. The book is mostly scouting and information gathering, which makes sense, and relationship working-out between the paladin and the forger, which reaches several satisfying conclusions.
Cherie Priest, Bloodshot: Raylene is a century-old vampire with some paranoid/OCD tendencies. She survives by being a very good thief. One day, she takes on a vampire client who wants more information on the procedures to which he was subjected when he was captured by the government. The search takes her to some dangerous places, and also gets her entangled with a buff ex-military drag queen. I had fun, though Raylene assumes she should use the pronoun that tracks that character’s current visual presentation at any given time, but doesn’t ask, and I wish she had.
Cherie Priest, Hellbent: Raylene Pendle is back, trying to protect her vampire boyfriend Ian from his SF family who want to kill him, by investigating an Atlanta vampire House on behalf of SF. Also, she’s trying to get some mystical penis bones from a schizophrenic genius who is trying to use them to erase her past mistakes (including the people and places involved). If that seems scattered, it fits the narrator’s internal monologue, which has a lot of tangents. I enjoyed it but lots of plot-related things happened really fast.
Catherine Asaro, Primary Inversion: In a universe split between the sadistic empath-torturing Traders and the empath/telepaths running the Ruby Empire, a battle-scarred Ruby heir comes across the Trader emperor’s greatest secret-his sheltered, empath son. If you want a reversal of the jaded billionaire boy/naïve girl trope, here it is.
Catherine Asaro, The Bronze Skies: Major Bhaaj fought her way out of the despised Undercity into a precarious position in her city. Then the Ruby Emperor directs her to find a killer whose strange behavior may threaten the Emperor herself. The quest leads Bhaaj back into the Undercity and to secrets about the history of the whole Ruby Empire. A good adventure story with a lot of worldbuilding.
Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver: Really deserves all the praise it’s been getting. Miryem, a Jewish moneylender eking out an ok existence in a small village in Poland-like Litvak, is captured by a Staryk (basically an ice elf) lord who threatens her to get her to turn silver into gold, which she begins doing by trading and ends with magic. Meanwhile, Miryem’s Staryk silver helps get Irina, a duke’s daughter, married off to the tsar, who’s possessed by a fire demon who’d like to eat the world and especially the Staryk. There’s also Wanda, a motherless girl abused by her father and hired by Miryem, and her brothers and the mysterious white tree where their mother was buried, and by the end a variety of snips and bits of other fairytales have visited. Humans are plausibly motivated and their circles of caring vary widely; even the protagonists make decisions that they know will hurt others in the belief that it’s the least bad thing they can do. There’s a question mark about Irina and the tsar at the end which I wouldn’t mind having answered for Yuletide, but Miryem and Wanda’s arcs both are quite satisfying.b
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
KJ Charles, Wanted, a Gentleman: Edwardian romance. Theo runs a matrimonial newspaper, eking out a marginal living (and writing romances under a woman’s name on the side), while Martin is a freed slave on an errand of obligation/kindness to save his former master’s daughter from ruin. They fight crime, have sex, and fall in love.
Justina Ireland, Dread Nation: The zombie uprising interrupted the Civil War, which was put aside while everyone fought the dead. Now Negroes (nominally freed) and Indians are put on the front lines, with more or less preparation to fight depending on circumstance. Jane, whose mother is the mistress of a Southern plantation, is at a high-class training school, preparing to be a white lady’s attendant if she can only master etiquette as well as she wields a blade. But events in Baltimore, and her former beau, conspire to put her in lots more trouble. It’s a cracking read, even for someone like me who doesn’t like zombies in general-a great premise and Jane makes a wonderful, hard-headed heroine against great odds.
Justine Ireland, Promise of Shadows: Earlier YA by Ireland: Zephyr is one of the vaettir, a mixture of human and divine lineages, who can exist in both worlds. She’s sent to Tartarus for the murder of a god, and that’s before the story starts. It turns out that the reason that she could kill a god was that she has a forbidden power, and might be the prophesied savior of the vaettir from Hera’s genocidal aims. Also, she likes a cute boy who might be bad for her. It was ok, but there were pacing issues and it was actively hilarious that Zephyr spent more time angsting about the boy than about the potential end of the world-Ireland’s Dread Nation is a vast improvement.
T. Kingfisher, Bryony and Roses: An enjoyable retelling of Beauty and the Beast, substantially darker in some ways (especially with respect to the original Beauty) and lighter in others. Bryony is a gardener from a now-impoverished family; on her way back from getting some rutabagas, she encounters a manor where no manor should be. The manor is itself a character, with a different agenda than the Beast’s. I liked the changes that were worked on the basic story, including Bryony’s earthily realistic terror.
T. Kingfisher, The Wonder Engine: In this sequel, the suicide squad has reached the enemy city, and now they have to figure out where the Clockwork Boys come from and how to stop them. The book is mostly scouting and information gathering, which makes sense, and relationship working-out between the paladin and the forger, which reaches several satisfying conclusions.
Cherie Priest, Bloodshot: Raylene is a century-old vampire with some paranoid/OCD tendencies. She survives by being a very good thief. One day, she takes on a vampire client who wants more information on the procedures to which he was subjected when he was captured by the government. The search takes her to some dangerous places, and also gets her entangled with a buff ex-military drag queen. I had fun, though Raylene assumes she should use the pronoun that tracks that character’s current visual presentation at any given time, but doesn’t ask, and I wish she had.
Cherie Priest, Hellbent: Raylene Pendle is back, trying to protect her vampire boyfriend Ian from his SF family who want to kill him, by investigating an Atlanta vampire House on behalf of SF. Also, she’s trying to get some mystical penis bones from a schizophrenic genius who is trying to use them to erase her past mistakes (including the people and places involved). If that seems scattered, it fits the narrator’s internal monologue, which has a lot of tangents. I enjoyed it but lots of plot-related things happened really fast.
Catherine Asaro, Primary Inversion: In a universe split between the sadistic empath-torturing Traders and the empath/telepaths running the Ruby Empire, a battle-scarred Ruby heir comes across the Trader emperor’s greatest secret-his sheltered, empath son. If you want a reversal of the jaded billionaire boy/naïve girl trope, here it is.
Catherine Asaro, The Bronze Skies: Major Bhaaj fought her way out of the despised Undercity into a precarious position in her city. Then the Ruby Emperor directs her to find a killer whose strange behavior may threaten the Emperor herself. The quest leads Bhaaj back into the Undercity and to secrets about the history of the whole Ruby Empire. A good adventure story with a lot of worldbuilding.
Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver: Really deserves all the praise it’s been getting. Miryem, a Jewish moneylender eking out an ok existence in a small village in Poland-like Litvak, is captured by a Staryk (basically an ice elf) lord who threatens her to get her to turn silver into gold, which she begins doing by trading and ends with magic. Meanwhile, Miryem’s Staryk silver helps get Irina, a duke’s daughter, married off to the tsar, who’s possessed by a fire demon who’d like to eat the world and especially the Staryk. There’s also Wanda, a motherless girl abused by her father and hired by Miryem, and her brothers and the mysterious white tree where their mother was buried, and by the end a variety of snips and bits of other fairytales have visited. Humans are plausibly motivated and their circles of caring vary widely; even the protagonists make decisions that they know will hurt others in the belief that it’s the least bad thing they can do. There’s a question mark about Irina and the tsar at the end which I wouldn’t mind having answered for Yuletide, but Miryem and Wanda’s arcs both are quite satisfying.b
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.