Havemercy
Who told me to read Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett? (Was it faustin_black? Someone else?)
I just finished it. (And, yes, like a fool I stayed up until 4:30 am to do so on a work day)
I'm sure I'll write some sort of review of it later when doing so wouldn't keep me awake to an even more ungodly hour.
[EDIT]
Plot summary: Basically, Havemercy is about this world where one empire has been at war with another for decades. There are metal dragons that are flown by Airmen at night; they're called the Dragon Corps and they're the trump card of the main characters' homeland. The dragons are operated by a combination of machinery and magic, and were built by magicians who access that same magic source.
Royston is a magician who inadvertently starts an international scandal by messing around with the prince of a nearby area and is sent to the far reaches of the countryside to his brother's estate as punishment. Hal is a naive young country boy who is so vaguely related to Royston's brother (or brother's kids?) that he may as well not be. He is in that estate as a tutor for Royston's brother's kids.
Rook is a hotshot Airman who flies Havemercy, the most elite of the metal dragons, and also happens to be an asshole and misogynistic pig to boot. He insults a diplomat's wife from the same area as the prince Royston screwed and another international incident occurs. Thom is a university student who is assigned the impossible task of teaching the Dragon Corps manners as a result.
My overall comment on Havemercy: it was a pretty good book with some interesting takes on sci-fi/fantasy tropes. Note that it does have a m/m (slash) aspect to it and it's written in 4 different 1st person POVs.
If you are someone who is heavy into plot it may not be right for you but if your main interest in reading a book is for the characters, this could be something you may find of interest. Particularly if you like the idea of scholarly-type characters being treated equally as important in the storyline as soldier-type characters.
BELOW ARE SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK/A MORE IN DEPTH REVIEW
So I have to admit-- when I first started reading the book, the choice of 4 different 1st person POVs with different writing styles to boot bugged me. There were times I thought, "Why the hell did they do this?!" and even thought at one point that the book would have been way better if only it had been written normally with 3rd person pov.
I found the multiple 1st person POVs to be really distracting, particularly Rook's POV, although I did note that it was interesting to see how the different people "spoke." There was a clear distinction between them-- Royston in all manner of pretty words, Hal a bit more direct and simple, Rook full of vulgarities and slang, and Thom kind of like Hal except more uncertain.
I also found that I liked Royston and Hal well enough from the beginning but Thom and Rook's POVs both annoyed me (which I have to admit made me feel bad because I wondered if maybe one of the authors wrote those two and the other wrote the other two and I didn't want to feel like I was singling out one author for dislike and yet I couldn't help it). It was primarily because it seemed to me that the author/s were quite certain that Rook and the Airmen were the baddest mofos around and were SUPER AWESOME but because they were so sure of the awesomeness they didn't really bother to give reason for it. So it was like I was being told that Rook was scary or awesome or Thom was afraid but it didn't do a very good job of showing it in story. Also, Thom just seemed to react strangely to things, I felt.
I thought that a lot of the things the Airmen did were pretty juvenile and it was really weird because I thought Thom had good reason to be nervous/afraid, but he was never nervous/afraid where I thought he should be and then reacted that way in areas where it just seemed silly or melodramatic. It really threw me off. And I didn't find Rook to be the sort of asshole character who you love to hate.. and he didn't even just seem to be a dick who couldn't help himself. He just seemed... annoying.
Which was a shame because I wanted to like Rook. And I wanted to like Thom because he was put in an interesting position.
So as I read the book, there were times I couldn't decide if I liked it that much. Some POVs I started to get annoyed when I saw coming up, because I didn't particularly care what was going on with him. I also don't mind slow plot or focus on characters but for a long time I felt like it wasn't even focusing correctly on the characters-- nothing was happening in the plot or character development and I sort of wondered what the point was supposed to be about the book.
It was funny because I realized abruptly at one point that I was reading a book set during war time, that featured two scholarly nerd-types, that didn't even seem to care much about the war, and seemed to focus more on the bookworms than the soldiers. In a way I kind of liked that, that men who were interested in books and stories and studying, were given equal face time as a magician and a dragon rider-- but then the fact that nothing was happening kind of took away from it all.
I figured I would just keep reading the book idly and be done.
So you can imagine my surprise, somewhere past halfway through the book, at realizing suddenly that I was walking around the house holding the book trying to read it while doing things in the kitchen. Trying to read while I was putting makeup on in the morning or even (amusingly enough XD) trying to change into pajamas at night. (Let me tell you, open books do not go well through arm holes)
Somewhere along the line, I started getting annoyed when it changed POVs not because I was uninterested in the person I was about to read but because I didn't want it to stop showing what was happening with the previous person. And somewhere along the line that kept happening at each POV-- initial frustration to jumping away from the old POV to frustration at jumping away from this one.
Somewhere along the line, I saw how cool it was how they told one full story by highlighting different parts of the whole.
Somewhere along the line I saw exactly how they all fit together after all, which was at once exactly how I'd expected and not what I'd anticipated at all.
Somewhere along the line, the POVs were not only no longer distracting or annoying, but I found myself thinking, "How could they have written this any other way?"
And somewhere along the line, I started to like Rook's POV, I stopped being frustrated by Thom's POV, and Royston and Hal almost fell behind those two in my interest in reading more.
It's fascinating, really. I couldn't say exactly when the shift happened for me but I'd wager a guess that for Rook and Thom it was around the time of the ball, and really that was probably the same for Hal and Royston because I-- well, no, I don't think I liked them more after they hit Thremedon. I think their transition was much sooner in the book as to when I liked them. Maybe the boat house was the change for me.
Also, BIG SPOILER HERE, but I kept trying to figure out what was to come with Rook and Thom... I assumed at first they were just both straight and it would be all about them becoming friends... then at one point I thought maybe it was going to become a romantic relationship between them... so that when the scene occurred where Rook let slip about his brother who died in the fire all I thought was, "Wow, what are the odds they'd both lose a brother to fire? I guess that will be what they'll bond over then."
It didn't even occur to me that they could be each other's brother, because they just seemed so totally different-- not only in personality but in looks beside. I'm still not really sure how blond-haired, blue-eyed, super beautiful Rook is blood brothers with red(?)-haired, green-eyed, freckle-faced and average Thom. It just doesn't seem like two people who would have the same DNA running through them.
But I don't know, maybe that's something that is explored in future books. NO SPOILERS PLEASE! I plan to read the other books ^^
Anyway Thom lets that particular bombshell loose totally offhandedly in his next POV and that threw me off entirely. So that was cool, that I wasn't expecting that at all.
When Rook became such a bitch about Thom's timing... that was another thing about Thom. He took all this responsibility for things that I don't think he actually really did anything wrong with. I don't think it was such a heinous thing for him to not tell Rook immediately that they were brothers. To me it was perfectly excusable-- after all, Rook had been horrific to him for a long time and had just made it clear he'd been manipulating Thom pretty terribly. I don't think Rook had the right to be that pissed at Thom later, honestly, but both of them just accepted that this was the correct way to see it and Thom was totally at fault.
Still, I did like Rook a lot more around that time, when it was finally visible that there was more to him than being an obnoxious and juvenile jerk. When he went off to war acting like Thom was dead to him I thought that was pretty shitty, and then he realized he cared out on the battlefield and I figured things would change, but when he came back he was doing the same thing all over again. I pretty much wanted to shake him.
But because of that I also wasn't expecting the ending with them, where they end up taking off together, so the scene where Thom opens the door and nearly falls over Rook waiting for him made me really happy. Now I'm excited to see those two running around together.
As for Hal and Royston, well, I thought those two were pretty cute from the start and I continued to like them throughout. It's funny because although I always liked Hal and Royston, I think by the end I may be more intrigued by Rook and Thom. Still, Hal and Royston had a lot of really sweet scenes, and you can tell they really love each other. I loved that part about them.
I also really like Hal a lot. He's such a sweetheart and I love that he is "awful at lying" and all his thoughts are written clear on his face so that when he has a POV and you see how Royston suddenly changes, you know that what you just read in the POV was just as easy for Royston to read as if he held the book in his hands too. I really liked the scene in the dome where they started kissing and Royston's hands slid up Hal's back.
One of the reviews on Amazon compared Royston and Hal to Seregil and Alec from Nightrunner and I find that to be a somewhat apt comparison. Although, it's been awhile since I read Nightrunner and, really, I wouldn't put too much weight behind that observation because the comparison is basically this: older, more experienced man finds younger, more naive man in the countryside; they end up going together to the city, adventure possibly ensues, and they grow to love each other. Really, in and of itself, that's just the sort of plot any fantasy series with a relationship in it is likely to have-- it's just that it seems more comparable because it's slash, whereas think of all the m/f couples that may fit this scenario in fantasy series over the years. We don't compare them to that because that's het is all.
I actually really liked Hal and Thom as friends-- even though it was funny because it wasn't until they were standing in front of each other that I realized I was imagining them as basically the same person. They really do have quite similar personalities in a lot of ways. Although because of that I kind of want to see them run around as friends.
Rook and Royston were amusing in one of those end scenes where they finally met. And even then it was only amusing because they were both like, "Oh hi. Yeah, I guess I've heard of you. Whatever." Whereas when Thom and Hal met they were like, "T_T A kindred spirit omg~! Please talk to me? Please?"
Of the 14 Airmen that flew out into the final battle only 5 returned. I was worried about who it would be because quite frankly I didn't care about the majority of the Airmen-- so I was really glad to see that all the ones I actually cared about had lived. Although I did kind of like Ivory and Niall alright, and I liked Ace pretty well.
The whole plague thing was kind of weird (and I thought immediately it had to do with the Well) but not weird in a bad way. Just not what I was expecting. It was pretty sad in the dome though and one thing I really liked is that the two scholarly bookworm types basically save the country as much (if not more) than the brash, fighting types. Go go nerds! Your skills are totally useful for once in fantasy!
Given the fact that I decided to stay up until 4:30 am reading the book to finish it rather than sleeping like I should have done, it goes to show that I did find it to be a good book in the end.
At this point I'm rambling but I guess I didn't get my thoughts in quite as much order as I thought I did before I sat down to read this. Oh well.
I'm planning to read the other books in the series (I was really happy to see that there were more). The reviews for some of the next books are higher than for this book, then one it goes down like this book, and then in the next (newest) one it goes up again. So that has me very curious about what's to come.
I just finished it. (And, yes, like a fool I stayed up until 4:30 am to do so on a work day)
I'm sure I'll write some sort of review of it later when doing so wouldn't keep me awake to an even more ungodly hour.
[EDIT]
Plot summary: Basically, Havemercy is about this world where one empire has been at war with another for decades. There are metal dragons that are flown by Airmen at night; they're called the Dragon Corps and they're the trump card of the main characters' homeland. The dragons are operated by a combination of machinery and magic, and were built by magicians who access that same magic source.
Royston is a magician who inadvertently starts an international scandal by messing around with the prince of a nearby area and is sent to the far reaches of the countryside to his brother's estate as punishment. Hal is a naive young country boy who is so vaguely related to Royston's brother (or brother's kids?) that he may as well not be. He is in that estate as a tutor for Royston's brother's kids.
Rook is a hotshot Airman who flies Havemercy, the most elite of the metal dragons, and also happens to be an asshole and misogynistic pig to boot. He insults a diplomat's wife from the same area as the prince Royston screwed and another international incident occurs. Thom is a university student who is assigned the impossible task of teaching the Dragon Corps manners as a result.
My overall comment on Havemercy: it was a pretty good book with some interesting takes on sci-fi/fantasy tropes. Note that it does have a m/m (slash) aspect to it and it's written in 4 different 1st person POVs.
If you are someone who is heavy into plot it may not be right for you but if your main interest in reading a book is for the characters, this could be something you may find of interest. Particularly if you like the idea of scholarly-type characters being treated equally as important in the storyline as soldier-type characters.
BELOW ARE SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK/A MORE IN DEPTH REVIEW
So I have to admit-- when I first started reading the book, the choice of 4 different 1st person POVs with different writing styles to boot bugged me. There were times I thought, "Why the hell did they do this?!" and even thought at one point that the book would have been way better if only it had been written normally with 3rd person pov.
I found the multiple 1st person POVs to be really distracting, particularly Rook's POV, although I did note that it was interesting to see how the different people "spoke." There was a clear distinction between them-- Royston in all manner of pretty words, Hal a bit more direct and simple, Rook full of vulgarities and slang, and Thom kind of like Hal except more uncertain.
I also found that I liked Royston and Hal well enough from the beginning but Thom and Rook's POVs both annoyed me (which I have to admit made me feel bad because I wondered if maybe one of the authors wrote those two and the other wrote the other two and I didn't want to feel like I was singling out one author for dislike and yet I couldn't help it). It was primarily because it seemed to me that the author/s were quite certain that Rook and the Airmen were the baddest mofos around and were SUPER AWESOME but because they were so sure of the awesomeness they didn't really bother to give reason for it. So it was like I was being told that Rook was scary or awesome or Thom was afraid but it didn't do a very good job of showing it in story. Also, Thom just seemed to react strangely to things, I felt.
I thought that a lot of the things the Airmen did were pretty juvenile and it was really weird because I thought Thom had good reason to be nervous/afraid, but he was never nervous/afraid where I thought he should be and then reacted that way in areas where it just seemed silly or melodramatic. It really threw me off. And I didn't find Rook to be the sort of asshole character who you love to hate.. and he didn't even just seem to be a dick who couldn't help himself. He just seemed... annoying.
Which was a shame because I wanted to like Rook. And I wanted to like Thom because he was put in an interesting position.
So as I read the book, there were times I couldn't decide if I liked it that much. Some POVs I started to get annoyed when I saw coming up, because I didn't particularly care what was going on with him. I also don't mind slow plot or focus on characters but for a long time I felt like it wasn't even focusing correctly on the characters-- nothing was happening in the plot or character development and I sort of wondered what the point was supposed to be about the book.
It was funny because I realized abruptly at one point that I was reading a book set during war time, that featured two scholarly nerd-types, that didn't even seem to care much about the war, and seemed to focus more on the bookworms than the soldiers. In a way I kind of liked that, that men who were interested in books and stories and studying, were given equal face time as a magician and a dragon rider-- but then the fact that nothing was happening kind of took away from it all.
I figured I would just keep reading the book idly and be done.
So you can imagine my surprise, somewhere past halfway through the book, at realizing suddenly that I was walking around the house holding the book trying to read it while doing things in the kitchen. Trying to read while I was putting makeup on in the morning or even (amusingly enough XD) trying to change into pajamas at night. (Let me tell you, open books do not go well through arm holes)
Somewhere along the line, I started getting annoyed when it changed POVs not because I was uninterested in the person I was about to read but because I didn't want it to stop showing what was happening with the previous person. And somewhere along the line that kept happening at each POV-- initial frustration to jumping away from the old POV to frustration at jumping away from this one.
Somewhere along the line, I saw how cool it was how they told one full story by highlighting different parts of the whole.
Somewhere along the line I saw exactly how they all fit together after all, which was at once exactly how I'd expected and not what I'd anticipated at all.
Somewhere along the line, the POVs were not only no longer distracting or annoying, but I found myself thinking, "How could they have written this any other way?"
And somewhere along the line, I started to like Rook's POV, I stopped being frustrated by Thom's POV, and Royston and Hal almost fell behind those two in my interest in reading more.
It's fascinating, really. I couldn't say exactly when the shift happened for me but I'd wager a guess that for Rook and Thom it was around the time of the ball, and really that was probably the same for Hal and Royston because I-- well, no, I don't think I liked them more after they hit Thremedon. I think their transition was much sooner in the book as to when I liked them. Maybe the boat house was the change for me.
Also, BIG SPOILER HERE, but I kept trying to figure out what was to come with Rook and Thom... I assumed at first they were just both straight and it would be all about them becoming friends... then at one point I thought maybe it was going to become a romantic relationship between them... so that when the scene occurred where Rook let slip about his brother who died in the fire all I thought was, "Wow, what are the odds they'd both lose a brother to fire? I guess that will be what they'll bond over then."
It didn't even occur to me that they could be each other's brother, because they just seemed so totally different-- not only in personality but in looks beside. I'm still not really sure how blond-haired, blue-eyed, super beautiful Rook is blood brothers with red(?)-haired, green-eyed, freckle-faced and average Thom. It just doesn't seem like two people who would have the same DNA running through them.
But I don't know, maybe that's something that is explored in future books. NO SPOILERS PLEASE! I plan to read the other books ^^
Anyway Thom lets that particular bombshell loose totally offhandedly in his next POV and that threw me off entirely. So that was cool, that I wasn't expecting that at all.
When Rook became such a bitch about Thom's timing... that was another thing about Thom. He took all this responsibility for things that I don't think he actually really did anything wrong with. I don't think it was such a heinous thing for him to not tell Rook immediately that they were brothers. To me it was perfectly excusable-- after all, Rook had been horrific to him for a long time and had just made it clear he'd been manipulating Thom pretty terribly. I don't think Rook had the right to be that pissed at Thom later, honestly, but both of them just accepted that this was the correct way to see it and Thom was totally at fault.
Still, I did like Rook a lot more around that time, when it was finally visible that there was more to him than being an obnoxious and juvenile jerk. When he went off to war acting like Thom was dead to him I thought that was pretty shitty, and then he realized he cared out on the battlefield and I figured things would change, but when he came back he was doing the same thing all over again. I pretty much wanted to shake him.
But because of that I also wasn't expecting the ending with them, where they end up taking off together, so the scene where Thom opens the door and nearly falls over Rook waiting for him made me really happy. Now I'm excited to see those two running around together.
As for Hal and Royston, well, I thought those two were pretty cute from the start and I continued to like them throughout. It's funny because although I always liked Hal and Royston, I think by the end I may be more intrigued by Rook and Thom. Still, Hal and Royston had a lot of really sweet scenes, and you can tell they really love each other. I loved that part about them.
I also really like Hal a lot. He's such a sweetheart and I love that he is "awful at lying" and all his thoughts are written clear on his face so that when he has a POV and you see how Royston suddenly changes, you know that what you just read in the POV was just as easy for Royston to read as if he held the book in his hands too. I really liked the scene in the dome where they started kissing and Royston's hands slid up Hal's back.
One of the reviews on Amazon compared Royston and Hal to Seregil and Alec from Nightrunner and I find that to be a somewhat apt comparison. Although, it's been awhile since I read Nightrunner and, really, I wouldn't put too much weight behind that observation because the comparison is basically this: older, more experienced man finds younger, more naive man in the countryside; they end up going together to the city, adventure possibly ensues, and they grow to love each other. Really, in and of itself, that's just the sort of plot any fantasy series with a relationship in it is likely to have-- it's just that it seems more comparable because it's slash, whereas think of all the m/f couples that may fit this scenario in fantasy series over the years. We don't compare them to that because that's het is all.
I actually really liked Hal and Thom as friends-- even though it was funny because it wasn't until they were standing in front of each other that I realized I was imagining them as basically the same person. They really do have quite similar personalities in a lot of ways. Although because of that I kind of want to see them run around as friends.
Rook and Royston were amusing in one of those end scenes where they finally met. And even then it was only amusing because they were both like, "Oh hi. Yeah, I guess I've heard of you. Whatever." Whereas when Thom and Hal met they were like, "T_T A kindred spirit omg~! Please talk to me? Please?"
Of the 14 Airmen that flew out into the final battle only 5 returned. I was worried about who it would be because quite frankly I didn't care about the majority of the Airmen-- so I was really glad to see that all the ones I actually cared about had lived. Although I did kind of like Ivory and Niall alright, and I liked Ace pretty well.
The whole plague thing was kind of weird (and I thought immediately it had to do with the Well) but not weird in a bad way. Just not what I was expecting. It was pretty sad in the dome though and one thing I really liked is that the two scholarly bookworm types basically save the country as much (if not more) than the brash, fighting types. Go go nerds! Your skills are totally useful for once in fantasy!
Given the fact that I decided to stay up until 4:30 am reading the book to finish it rather than sleeping like I should have done, it goes to show that I did find it to be a good book in the end.
At this point I'm rambling but I guess I didn't get my thoughts in quite as much order as I thought I did before I sat down to read this. Oh well.
I'm planning to read the other books in the series (I was really happy to see that there were more). The reviews for some of the next books are higher than for this book, then one it goes down like this book, and then in the next (newest) one it goes up again. So that has me very curious about what's to come.