Book reviews: KJ Charles and Alex Beecroft
Okay guys I’ve read some books. Short reviews, since they are short books:
The Magpie Lord: A Charm of Magpies #1
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
3.75isssh
Brief rundown: Victorian setting with magic and the supernatural and heavy Chinese elements, completely historically inaccurate including dialogue and the prose and social attitudes and just about everything, well-written with fun characters and ACTUAL PLOT, HO-LY SHEE-ITTT, worldbuilding and rules that make sense even if they are only quasi-semi-sorta Victorian, magical rules that make sense, character dilemmas and motivations and issues that make sense, unfortunately while the plot is well-built there are a bunch of baddies that pop out of nowhere at the end, even if the groundwork was laid for them you’ve never SEEN them before so they are a little bit Antagonist Ex Machina, which is the reason for the slightly lower rating, female characters present though not a large influence and the majority of them are baddies or idiots or dead.
I didn’t mind that this book doesn’t sound anything like the time period it was set in, because at least it was consistently that way and wasn’t TRYING to be accurate. It was having fun, so that makes it easy for a reader to have fun and juts kind of go, “okay, it’s like this then” and accept it. The magic system was cool, and understandable, clear shortcomings and limits and restrictions to using it that were constantly relevant within the story, the whole left-over influence from the Magpie Lord was really interesting, just cool stuff. While a lot of the things that happen might seem random and sporadic, they do all tie together, which is very nice. There’s some very creepy magic ideas that show up, just some nice little details and worldbuilding that feel very solid and well-constructed; always nice to see. It felt like a legitimate thing, basically., not an outlandish explosion of magic everywhere but just a cool way that it was in the world and being manipulated through the people who could use it; the book has alternating 3rd limited POVs and so you see more of this through Stephen, and it’s all very naturally included-where he draws his power from and how he uses it and how he sees and feels things.
The characters are likeable; actually my favorite might be Merrick, who is Crane’s manservant, but Crane and Stephen are good too. They have an age difference, a height difference, a social standing difference, and a wealth difference, all these things are pretty interesting and a few are occasionally problematic. Both of them are good people at heart though, which is actually goddamn nice to read about for a change. Because so many books make their characters assholes without realizing it. Crane CAN be an asshole, but he usually is doing it because he doesn’t realize what it looks like, and he’s quick to make amends. Stephen is scrappy and efficient and capable, and while he starts out with legit reasons to hate Crane, they build a respect for each other that doesn’t feel like a forced thing-you can understand what each of them sees in the other and what draws them to each other, which again is rare in these kinds of books.
Also, there are awesome moving tattoos. Clearly, I like those.
A Case of Possession: A Charm of Magpies #2
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
I thought this one was better - the plot was more solid than the last and better woven into itself, so that there wasn’t any last minute introduction of characters or things that nobody knew about before and therefore couldn’t have pieced together. The relationship between Crane and Stephen is logically difficult, and ALL the reasons for their tension are actually plausible and in line with the worldbuilding presented-suddenly Stephen has a lot of power, but no clear source of it, of course his peers are thinking he’s going Dark Side, his only explanation for it also comes with admitting he’s gay and revealing Crane’s special thing, both of which are obviously no-no obviously because Victorian and ALSO because Crane could then very likely be focused on by other practicioners as a source of power. Also there’s the issue of Crane perhaps leaving to go back to China because he just likes it there better, and no reason for Stephen to reveal all this shit for a lover who might not stick around. And then his reluctance/self-distancing in their whole situation makes Crane kind of more likely to pull away; it read as a realistic issue. So there was no ridiculous barriers being flung up for PLOT ANGST; their issues actually made sense. Although they were pretty much all ‘if/then’ scenarios and Stephen was projecting most of them out of paranoia, but there was still really no angsting! There were kind of sad wistful moments but not a lot of OMG DRAMA.
There’s a bit of strange sub/dom vibe with Crane and Stephen too and man the dirty talk. I mainly skip sex scenes; I skipped theirs, I assume they’re good but my god there’s NOTHING that I can’t take seriously more than dirty talk. It sounds so incredibly stupid, I don’t care who’s doing it or how in character it is, it snaps me right back to terrible fanfiction and terrible porn and are you SUPPOSED to take dirty talk seriously? Like, is it hot? Or is this Asexual Problem #1495845: Dirty Talk Sounds Ridiculous? Or is that just me.
Also a pretty cool lady character in this book too, Leonora. She was interesting and capable and definitely like not a Victorian lady at all, but I suppose she grew up in China and was kind of all street-ratty and involved in shady stuff so let’s give that to her. She was a nice addition, although pretty much the only lady other than dead ones. Let’s work on this please.
There was some really creepy magic in this one too! All the rat stuff was really interesting, like the possession curse (ew, but creepy-cool) and just generally more of the same kind of thing that was in the first book. Continuity kept, the same issues were at work and expanded upon and kept being issues.
But basically these are fun books, they’re entertaining and absorbing and they are quick reads, they are like $3.50 on Kindle, I enjoyed them, would read again. I hope there are more, as well.
Too Many Fairy Princes
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
2.5
Yes, the title is stupid. The book is also fairly stupid.
It’s not badly written, as far as line-by-line goes. The characters aren’t even bad. They’re inconsistent and OOC all the time, but the base of what they should have been are not bad ideas. It's just the story and the emotions and just...everything. The book starts out fairly interesting and then just kind...of...starts to rush. Everything feels rushed, and overly-convenient, and frankly kind of fanfictiony. It feels like it needed to be a series. Things happen quickly and weirdly and emotions are felt too rapidly and scene breaks leap over weird things and there are just some really weird moments that you have to sort of stop and double-take and go...”really?”
So basically it’s a thing where there’s lot of elf princes trying to get the throne from their father and having to prove themselves and they’re all murderous bastards except Kjartan who DGAF and his other brother tries to kill him and he ends up escaping to Earth where he meets poor down-on-his luck bumbly dweeby human Joel (cannnnn we stop making these fantasy-meets-present-Earth with a total derpy stammering gobsmacked ineffectual human please? I know I’ve got my own stupid goddamn fantasy-meets-present-earth series but at least Alan can FORM. A COHERENT. SENTENCE. and tries to take control of his situation) and then there’s action-murder-mobster-fantasy-interdimenisional-war-elf-prince-nonesense and it SOUNDS kind of cool but god it’s all kind of a mess. I’m having a hard time poinpointing why; but there’s just something very juvenile about the whole thing, and my god was Kjartan described like the most bishonen bishie to ever have white hair and pale skin and amazing eyes MY GOD it was like reading the worst fanfiction.
Also the elves in general. They were a kind of weird cross between European elf lore and Tolkein elves. Because their physical descriptions were EXACTLY like Tolkien elves, yet they couldn’t touch iron and giving people their real names gave them power over them, so they were more the European elf/fairies, not “fairy-tale” elves. I have no idea if the book was trying to make them a hybrid of fairies and elves or if just mixed up its lore or was just being WEIRD, but it really did read like such a lazy Tolkien rip-off especially because Joel is like WOW JUST LIKE TOLKIEN as soon as he sees Kjartan. But then he applies all this European mythology to Kjartan and is always RIGHT, so he doesn’t continue in that line of thought? And a lot of older folklore depicts elves and fairies as being generally the same kind of thing and also evil/tricksters, and while these elves aren’t really evil so much as they’re emotionless and kind of holier-than-thou about other species and kind of cruel. So if Joel was really thinking Kjartan matched European folklore, he should have assumed the guy was kind of bad news and probably not a guy to be hanging around with. Not like, the most cuddly tsundere to ever tsunder.
The culture clash started off interesting and then just dissolved into muck and True Love. Kjartan’s unwillingness to do anything for himself lasts all of three seconds. So it felt like an incredibly cheap plot to get them naked in a shower together right off the bat. Because the next morning Kjartan’s dressed himself and is trying to cook for himself and he never ever ever refuses to do “servant work” again. I thought it would have been pretty good to have Kjartan absolutely refuse to do ANYTHING at all and Joel eventually taking none of that shit anymore and growing a backbone and standing up for him (and Kjartan realizing he needs to GET OFF HIS ASS AND DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, which was a huge arc in his story but apparently only relevant when it came to his possible kingship, not his own personal growth, whatever), but instead he sort of grows a backbone because....reasons? And even then he really doesn’t. Well, sort of. He grows idiot LOVE CONQUERS ALL reflexes and just kind of jumps a guy like a moron. Well, at least he had martial arts as SORT OF an excuse but martial arts does not teach you to fucking attack people, it’s about avoiding that and/or defending yourself.
Joel got annoying because he started to have this weird presumptuous attitude about Kjartan’s feelings, like he DESERVED them and he was getting all offended that Kjartan wasn’t all over him, or something, even when they were not TOGETHER, AT ALL, and Kjartan went from “don’t touch me filthy human” to “I have no problem having sex with humans”? What? When did he ever HAVE sex with humans? Are there humans in his world? It’s not clear at all. It sounded like they were reserved for Earth only, and that Kjartan had been there once, but...if he didn’t like being touched by humans, then whaaaat. Although that was another character trait that totally disappeared; he didn’t mind it after the first time. So much stuff completely dropped in this book.
I thought the marching over into the elf world with automatic weapons and shit was really stupid. Especially because NONE OF THEM (except maybe Drake) was qualified to use them. It was just...a weird pointless cross-over type thing that really didn’t do much. At least the thing with Drake made sense in general. Also Jesus I can’t even believe the thing with the Queen. THAT was hamfisted, and just...ugh. I mean at least she was a female character? I just get really uncomfortable when real people are written into a book like that.
They don’t even address the whole “Kjartan will live forever and Joel will die” thing so Kjartan is just gonna fuck around on Earth for like a half century or so with his boytoy and then go home? IDK. I hate it when that shit isn’t addressed, because at some point you’re gonna have withered octogenarian and his ethereal perpetually young adult boyfriend and there’s just no way.
It’s kind of a bummer because an actual POC main character? But then contrasted with the whitey mcwhiterson more-beautifuller-than-everything elf guys and overall the book is not that good.
The Magpie Lord: A Charm of Magpies #1
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
3.75isssh
Brief rundown: Victorian setting with magic and the supernatural and heavy Chinese elements, completely historically inaccurate including dialogue and the prose and social attitudes and just about everything, well-written with fun characters and ACTUAL PLOT, HO-LY SHEE-ITTT, worldbuilding and rules that make sense even if they are only quasi-semi-sorta Victorian, magical rules that make sense, character dilemmas and motivations and issues that make sense, unfortunately while the plot is well-built there are a bunch of baddies that pop out of nowhere at the end, even if the groundwork was laid for them you’ve never SEEN them before so they are a little bit Antagonist Ex Machina, which is the reason for the slightly lower rating, female characters present though not a large influence and the majority of them are baddies or idiots or dead.
I didn’t mind that this book doesn’t sound anything like the time period it was set in, because at least it was consistently that way and wasn’t TRYING to be accurate. It was having fun, so that makes it easy for a reader to have fun and juts kind of go, “okay, it’s like this then” and accept it. The magic system was cool, and understandable, clear shortcomings and limits and restrictions to using it that were constantly relevant within the story, the whole left-over influence from the Magpie Lord was really interesting, just cool stuff. While a lot of the things that happen might seem random and sporadic, they do all tie together, which is very nice. There’s some very creepy magic ideas that show up, just some nice little details and worldbuilding that feel very solid and well-constructed; always nice to see. It felt like a legitimate thing, basically., not an outlandish explosion of magic everywhere but just a cool way that it was in the world and being manipulated through the people who could use it; the book has alternating 3rd limited POVs and so you see more of this through Stephen, and it’s all very naturally included-where he draws his power from and how he uses it and how he sees and feels things.
The characters are likeable; actually my favorite might be Merrick, who is Crane’s manservant, but Crane and Stephen are good too. They have an age difference, a height difference, a social standing difference, and a wealth difference, all these things are pretty interesting and a few are occasionally problematic. Both of them are good people at heart though, which is actually goddamn nice to read about for a change. Because so many books make their characters assholes without realizing it. Crane CAN be an asshole, but he usually is doing it because he doesn’t realize what it looks like, and he’s quick to make amends. Stephen is scrappy and efficient and capable, and while he starts out with legit reasons to hate Crane, they build a respect for each other that doesn’t feel like a forced thing-you can understand what each of them sees in the other and what draws them to each other, which again is rare in these kinds of books.
Also, there are awesome moving tattoos. Clearly, I like those.
A Case of Possession: A Charm of Magpies #2
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
I thought this one was better - the plot was more solid than the last and better woven into itself, so that there wasn’t any last minute introduction of characters or things that nobody knew about before and therefore couldn’t have pieced together. The relationship between Crane and Stephen is logically difficult, and ALL the reasons for their tension are actually plausible and in line with the worldbuilding presented-suddenly Stephen has a lot of power, but no clear source of it, of course his peers are thinking he’s going Dark Side, his only explanation for it also comes with admitting he’s gay and revealing Crane’s special thing, both of which are obviously no-no obviously because Victorian and ALSO because Crane could then very likely be focused on by other practicioners as a source of power. Also there’s the issue of Crane perhaps leaving to go back to China because he just likes it there better, and no reason for Stephen to reveal all this shit for a lover who might not stick around. And then his reluctance/self-distancing in their whole situation makes Crane kind of more likely to pull away; it read as a realistic issue. So there was no ridiculous barriers being flung up for PLOT ANGST; their issues actually made sense. Although they were pretty much all ‘if/then’ scenarios and Stephen was projecting most of them out of paranoia, but there was still really no angsting! There were kind of sad wistful moments but not a lot of OMG DRAMA.
There’s a bit of strange sub/dom vibe with Crane and Stephen too and man the dirty talk. I mainly skip sex scenes; I skipped theirs, I assume they’re good but my god there’s NOTHING that I can’t take seriously more than dirty talk. It sounds so incredibly stupid, I don’t care who’s doing it or how in character it is, it snaps me right back to terrible fanfiction and terrible porn and are you SUPPOSED to take dirty talk seriously? Like, is it hot? Or is this Asexual Problem #1495845: Dirty Talk Sounds Ridiculous? Or is that just me.
Also a pretty cool lady character in this book too, Leonora. She was interesting and capable and definitely like not a Victorian lady at all, but I suppose she grew up in China and was kind of all street-ratty and involved in shady stuff so let’s give that to her. She was a nice addition, although pretty much the only lady other than dead ones. Let’s work on this please.
There was some really creepy magic in this one too! All the rat stuff was really interesting, like the possession curse (ew, but creepy-cool) and just generally more of the same kind of thing that was in the first book. Continuity kept, the same issues were at work and expanded upon and kept being issues.
But basically these are fun books, they’re entertaining and absorbing and they are quick reads, they are like $3.50 on Kindle, I enjoyed them, would read again. I hope there are more, as well.
Too Many Fairy Princes
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
2.5
Yes, the title is stupid. The book is also fairly stupid.
It’s not badly written, as far as line-by-line goes. The characters aren’t even bad. They’re inconsistent and OOC all the time, but the base of what they should have been are not bad ideas. It's just the story and the emotions and just...everything. The book starts out fairly interesting and then just kind...of...starts to rush. Everything feels rushed, and overly-convenient, and frankly kind of fanfictiony. It feels like it needed to be a series. Things happen quickly and weirdly and emotions are felt too rapidly and scene breaks leap over weird things and there are just some really weird moments that you have to sort of stop and double-take and go...”really?”
So basically it’s a thing where there’s lot of elf princes trying to get the throne from their father and having to prove themselves and they’re all murderous bastards except Kjartan who DGAF and his other brother tries to kill him and he ends up escaping to Earth where he meets poor down-on-his luck bumbly dweeby human Joel (cannnnn we stop making these fantasy-meets-present-Earth with a total derpy stammering gobsmacked ineffectual human please? I know I’ve got my own stupid goddamn fantasy-meets-present-earth series but at least Alan can FORM. A COHERENT. SENTENCE. and tries to take control of his situation) and then there’s action-murder-mobster-fantasy-interdimenisional-war-elf-prince-nonesense and it SOUNDS kind of cool but god it’s all kind of a mess. I’m having a hard time poinpointing why; but there’s just something very juvenile about the whole thing, and my god was Kjartan described like the most bishonen bishie to ever have white hair and pale skin and amazing eyes MY GOD it was like reading the worst fanfiction.
Also the elves in general. They were a kind of weird cross between European elf lore and Tolkein elves. Because their physical descriptions were EXACTLY like Tolkien elves, yet they couldn’t touch iron and giving people their real names gave them power over them, so they were more the European elf/fairies, not “fairy-tale” elves. I have no idea if the book was trying to make them a hybrid of fairies and elves or if just mixed up its lore or was just being WEIRD, but it really did read like such a lazy Tolkien rip-off especially because Joel is like WOW JUST LIKE TOLKIEN as soon as he sees Kjartan. But then he applies all this European mythology to Kjartan and is always RIGHT, so he doesn’t continue in that line of thought? And a lot of older folklore depicts elves and fairies as being generally the same kind of thing and also evil/tricksters, and while these elves aren’t really evil so much as they’re emotionless and kind of holier-than-thou about other species and kind of cruel. So if Joel was really thinking Kjartan matched European folklore, he should have assumed the guy was kind of bad news and probably not a guy to be hanging around with. Not like, the most cuddly tsundere to ever tsunder.
The culture clash started off interesting and then just dissolved into muck and True Love. Kjartan’s unwillingness to do anything for himself lasts all of three seconds. So it felt like an incredibly cheap plot to get them naked in a shower together right off the bat. Because the next morning Kjartan’s dressed himself and is trying to cook for himself and he never ever ever refuses to do “servant work” again. I thought it would have been pretty good to have Kjartan absolutely refuse to do ANYTHING at all and Joel eventually taking none of that shit anymore and growing a backbone and standing up for him (and Kjartan realizing he needs to GET OFF HIS ASS AND DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, which was a huge arc in his story but apparently only relevant when it came to his possible kingship, not his own personal growth, whatever), but instead he sort of grows a backbone because....reasons? And even then he really doesn’t. Well, sort of. He grows idiot LOVE CONQUERS ALL reflexes and just kind of jumps a guy like a moron. Well, at least he had martial arts as SORT OF an excuse but martial arts does not teach you to fucking attack people, it’s about avoiding that and/or defending yourself.
Joel got annoying because he started to have this weird presumptuous attitude about Kjartan’s feelings, like he DESERVED them and he was getting all offended that Kjartan wasn’t all over him, or something, even when they were not TOGETHER, AT ALL, and Kjartan went from “don’t touch me filthy human” to “I have no problem having sex with humans”? What? When did he ever HAVE sex with humans? Are there humans in his world? It’s not clear at all. It sounded like they were reserved for Earth only, and that Kjartan had been there once, but...if he didn’t like being touched by humans, then whaaaat. Although that was another character trait that totally disappeared; he didn’t mind it after the first time. So much stuff completely dropped in this book.
I thought the marching over into the elf world with automatic weapons and shit was really stupid. Especially because NONE OF THEM (except maybe Drake) was qualified to use them. It was just...a weird pointless cross-over type thing that really didn’t do much. At least the thing with Drake made sense in general. Also Jesus I can’t even believe the thing with the Queen. THAT was hamfisted, and just...ugh. I mean at least she was a female character? I just get really uncomfortable when real people are written into a book like that.
They don’t even address the whole “Kjartan will live forever and Joel will die” thing so Kjartan is just gonna fuck around on Earth for like a half century or so with his boytoy and then go home? IDK. I hate it when that shit isn’t addressed, because at some point you’re gonna have withered octogenarian and his ethereal perpetually young adult boyfriend and there’s just no way.
It’s kind of a bummer because an actual POC main character? But then contrasted with the whitey mcwhiterson more-beautifuller-than-everything elf guys and overall the book is not that good.