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The Fragile Threads of Power: A Review

V.E. Schwab is back, and ready to take you on another rollicking ride.

It’s been seven years since the events of A Conjuring of Light. Seven years since King Maxim died, and Arnes’s capital of Red London was plunged into darkness. Seven years since Black London’s monstrous ruler, Osaron, tried to destroy everything that Kell, Lila, and Rhy held dear. In the wake of the battle to save the worlds, many things have changed. Rhy Maresh is now the king of Arnes, with Alucard Emery ever by his side as his lover and bodyguard. However, Rhy is seen as a target of ire for the people of Arnes as magic seems to be fading from their world. A group known as The Hand plots to kill him, hoping that removing the magicless king from the throne will restore their own dwindling power.

Meanwhile, Lila and Kell have begun a journey on board Lila’s ship. Sailing under no flag, they secretly aid King Rhy by observing and investigating things that might be of interest to him. Kell’s own access to magic is hampered by the lingering effects of the battle with Osaron years before. As such, he’s been forced to train his martial skills under Lila Bard’s watchful eye and serving as her lieutenant aboard the ship. Lila’s magic does not seem diminished, but with the shifts the world is undergoing, it may only be a matter of time. She’s had seven years to boost her own skills since then, and she’s only grown more comfortable with her Antari nature.

And then, in Red London, there is a young girl running a repair shop. She, like Alucard Emery, has the rare gift of seeing the lines of magic that swirl around and between things and people. She’s taken to using that skill to repair magic items, and she may be the unwitting key to The Hand’s plans for King Rhy.

V.E. Schwab promised us an eventual return to the world from the Shades of Magic trilogy, and that wait has paid off many times over. The Fragile Threads of Power skillfully introduces new players and reminds of why we loved the returning characters. The new threat to the Arnesian throne feels almost too believable in a kingdom already torn between people who can access magic and those who can’t. Prepare yourself for a journey as we launch into the first book of a sequel series that promises to be just as addictive of a read as its predecessor.

My utmost thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review. The Fragile Threads of Power is available for purchase as of today, 9/26/23. As Travars.

Starter Villain: A Review

I’ve enjoyed quite a few of John Scalzi’s books over the last few years, so it was a definite treat to be asked to review a copy of his latest novel, Starter Villain.

Starter Villain introduces readers to Charlie, a former business writer and current substitute teacher. Charlie lives with his cat, Hera, in the house his dad left him and his half-siblings. He’s been trying to get back on his feet for a few years, and things have not been going well. He wants to buy the neighborhood pub and take over as operator, but his current financial situation doesn’t encourage the bank to loan him the several million dollars he’d need to make that happen. In short, he’s hit a dead end.

Then, his uncle Jake dies.

Uncle Jake had not been present in Charlie’s life for decades, barely a thought in Charlie’s mind since the wedding gift he sent contained a (painfully accurate) prediction of how long the marriage would last. But Jake was rich. Jake was rich, and Charlie is his last living relative. Soon, one of Jake’s business associates arrives to inform Charlie that he has inherited his uncle Jake’s business empire. No, not the parking garage empire, although technically that too. The real business.

Uncle Jake was a supervillain.

Before he really knows what’s happening, Charlie is whisked away to his uncle’s volcano hideout to learn the ins and outs of being a modern villain connected to an organization that inspired the creation of James Bond and SPECTRE. His uncle was deeply involved in a cutthroat world of anti-satellite weapons, superintelligent cats, and unionized dolphins, and now it’s up to Charlie to face down all of Jake’s rivals. It’s going to be a long week.

Starter Villain is a quick, fun read with all of Scalzi’s standard humor (and references to his own cats, the Scamperbeasts). It was highly enjoyable, and I’m very grateful to the folks at Tor Books and NetGalley for giving me an eARC in exchange for a fair review. It’s out in the world on Tuesday, September 19th.

Unexpecting: A Review

Benjamin’s school year is not going according to plan. His best friend and robotics club teammate, Maxie, is pregnant, and he’s the father. And he’s gay. It’s complicated.

When Ben learns that Maxie’s pregnant, he’s immediately struck by the urge to take custody of the baby, providing the father figure that none of his three stepdads have been able or willing to be for him. When Ben’s mom and stepdad #3 learn about the baby, it’s all-hands-on-deck. His mom contacts stepdad #2, a lawyer, to get advice regarding Ben’s legal standing and path toward custody. She also reaches out to stepdad #3, a restauranteur, to arrange for Ben to get an after school job.

Soon, Ben is navigating a labyrinth of high school complications, juggling work, school, impending parenthood, and romance. He needs to find a path forward, and he’s going to have to learn the hard way which consequences he’s going to be able to live with. Everything that he’s done in his academic career hinges on his robotics team’s success, but Maxie’s pregnancy forces her to quit and leaves all of them grasping for understanding.

Unexpecting is a brilliant story. Jen Bailey does a fantastic job of presenting a realistic window into a high schooler’s life. It explores what family means (and the importance of different types of families), dives into the difficult choices that come with being a parent, and serves as a solid coming-of-age story for queer teens.

Unexpecting is available as of yesterday, 8/22/23. My thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Thornhedge: A Review

I love fairy tales. I’ve got a special spot in my heart for Sleeping Beauty (I mean, the prince’s name in the Disney version is Philip, after all). So imagine my joy when I learned that T. Kingfisher’s newest novella, Thornhedge, was a retelling of one of my favorite fairy tales.

Thornhedge is the story of Toadling, a fairy who has a limited amount of magical ability and a very important task. There is a tower, and within that tower lies a sleeper who must never be permitted to awaken. Toadling keeps watch from a distance, ensuring that none who pass by ever realize that anything could be found at the center of the field of briars, let alone the remains of a castle. For over two hundred years, Toadling does her job. However, she underestimates the power of stories.

Stories have spread, filtering down through the generations. Stories of a lost tower, and an enchantment waiting to be broken. A young Muslim knight named Halim arrives, having heard the tales. Unlike the people who have come across the thorns before, Halim is not discouraged or distracted. Instead, he spots Toadling and recognizes her for what she is. Halim’s arrival disrupts everything that Toadling has come to know over the last centuries, and forces her to face the truth about the sleeper in the tower.

T. Kingfisher, as I have mentioned before, is an incredible writer. This is the second novella that I’ve read from her this year, and I’m absolutely thrilled to have been given the opportunity to go through Thornhedge ahead of its public release. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Thornhedge will be out in stores on August 15th. I hope y’all like it as much as I did.

Camp Damascus: A Review

By now, I think that just about anyone who spends time in literary circles on the internet has heard of the legendary Chuck Tingle. While the pseudonymous author is probably best known for his short erotica works (aka “Tinglers”) like Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt, Tingle has been making forays into longer stories in other genres. The one that caught my attention most was Camp Damascus, a horror novel about a gay conversion camp in Montana. Needless to say I leapt at the opportunity to read it as soon as I could.

Camp Damascus is the story of Rose Darling, a twenty year-old autistic woman living in Neverton, Montana. Rose and her family are members of The Kingdom of the Pine, a close-knit ultra-conservative Christian community that runs the titular camp. Unlike any other such camp, Camp Damascus boasts an unheard-of 100% success rate for kids who are sent there by parents who don’t want them to be gay. Rose’s life (and life at the Darling house in general) seems perfect. She’s about to finish high school (all Kingdom kids spend two years on church activities in between years of school, and so by senior year are older than any of their non-Kingdom or secular classmates). She loves volunteering for the church, and she loves her parents. She also loves research, and memorizing scientific facts alongside bible verses.

When Rose is out with her friends at the local swimming hole trying to build up the confidence to dive off the little cliff, she takes the hand of her classmate, Martina, and they leap together. It’s an exhilarating experience, and the first time that Rose has dared to do something so brave. However, when she returns to the top of the cliff to test her newfound courage and jump again, she sees something horrifying. An old, drowned-looking woman with unnaturally long fingers and white eyes appears to be staring at her, and no one else can see her. Later that night, in the middle of dinner with her parents, Rose coughs out a large mass that turns out to be a swarm of insects. Something is very, very wrong.

Soon, Rose’s investigative mind begins racing, trying to understand what she has seen and felt. Memories begin to surface, and she finds herself questioning everything that she has ever known about herself, her parents, The Kingdom of the Pine, and Camp Damascus. In Neverton, trying to uncover the truth is going to be impossible to do alone, but it’s the right thing to do, even if it means casting aside everything that she knew that made her Rose Darling.

Camp Damascus is a pitch-perfect horror novel. It’s a quick read, and it’s delightfully discomforting to a former member of a Christian community. This book is going to be absolutely life-changing for so many people. Tingle’s writing is tight, packing a solid story into under 300 pages. There are loads of little nods to his particular turns of phrase throughout as well. If you’ve ever given his Twitter feed a read, you’ll find yourself chuckling (ha) at some familiar wording. My utmost thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Camp Damascus is out this Tuesday, July 18th. Go get yourself a copy and help to prove that love is real.

The Archive Undying: A Review

If you ask my coworkers what my most anticipated book of the summer is, odds are very good that they would mention Emma Mieko Candon’s The Archive Undying. The Star Wars: The Ronin author hooked me with the cover art alone, and the premise of the book intrigued me. A silly reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion in the description just ensured that I would pursue the book as publication approached.

Sunai doesn’t want to do a lot of things. He’s good at cooking, but bad at making rational decisions, especially when it comes to his taste in men. He’s good at identifying artificial intelligences, especially the older ones, but he’s reluctant to reveal why. He’s good at running from his past, but bad at staying unnoticed by the people who want to find him.

His world is full of robots. Massive artificial intelligences, beings that were practically gods, ruled over the city-states, each claiming territory and protecting the humans who lived there. While they all had different ways of doing things, almost all of them eventually went insane and became corrupted. The people who served as priests (and most residents still in the area) would be killed as the AI purged everything around it. The same thing happened in the city-state of Khuon Mo seventeen years ago, when Iterate Fractal lost stability, but on that day something unexpected happened. Sunai, serving as an archivist-priest for Iterate Fractal, died, but was brought back to life.

Now, Sunai can’t die. Or at least, he can’t stay dead. Injuries that he receives heal fast, and even being killed again will really only inconvenience him for a little while. He’s spent most of the last seventeen years trying to find out why Iterate Fractal sought to save him, and running away from the people he needs most so that he doesn’t hurt them. Plying his knowledge of AI, he’s made a living as a roaming salvage hunter so that he can stay one step (or more) ahead of the Harbor.

The Harbor run much of the world now, scavenging pieces of corrupted AI gods to create their own combat mechs. They want to control even more, but they need relics to do so. Relics like Sunai. After a drunken one-night-stand leads him to the knowledge that the Harbor have managed to make a mech out of remnants of Iterate Fractal, he feels compelled to find a way to stop them, but he’s going to have to face his past in order to get there. And Iterate Fractal is waiting, and hungry.

Y’all, this book is baffling, but I love it. Sunai is a complete disaster of a person. Emma Mieko Candon has crafted a dizzying (honestly at times overwhelming) world. There’s a lot to take in over the course of The Archive Undying, and it can be a trick to keep track of who and what are where, never mind the fact that Sunai isn’t particularly reliable as a narrator. However, I believe that it’s an engaging work with some narrative tricks that remind me of Harrow the Ninth. I feel like I’m not going to have gotten everything I can out of The Archive Undying in a single read-through, and I’m grateful for a text that challenged my expectations of what a sci-fi novel can be.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review, and thanks to Tor for taking a chance on a book this bold. I sincerely hope to see more of Sunai’s world, because a story this unique deserves to continue to be told.

It’s out in the world as of Tuesday, 6/27/23. Get in the robot.

The Warden: A Review

When Aelis arrives in Lone Pine, she’s struck almost immediately by the smell of sheep shit. This doesn’t bode well for her scheduled two-year tenure as the new Warden of the small farming village out on the border with orc country. Still, she has no way to contest her station, despite her wealthy heritage. The Lyceum where she studied wizardry saw fit to send her to Lone Pine, even if it doesn’t seem like a proper location for a Warden who specialized in Necromancy.

Truth be told, Aelis would rather be anywhere else. Any urban post. Somewhere closer to her friends and lovers from school. Anywhere were her contractually obligated housing isn’t a broken down, falling apart tower. Anywhere she might have people to protect who aren’t deathly afraid of her. But no. She’s in Lone Pine, and only Martin and Rus, the local innkeepers, have any tolerance for her presence. Almost everyone else shuns her and attempts to avoid her at all costs. It’s a rough start, to be sure, but it’s Aelis’s station, and she’ll do her job. She’s a Warden, after all, not just a wizard.

When a group of adventurers make their way into Lone Pine from a frontier excursion, cart laden with gold to spend in the small town, it seems like the fortunes of the villagers are about to change. However, a violent encounter shatters the peace and sends Aelis on a quest to track down the guilty party. Her journey will take her into the wilderness, and bring her face to face with threats both old and new.

Daniel M. Ford’s The Warden is out in stores today, and I highly recommend it to any D&D player or fantasy adventure fan, especially for those who’ve enjoyed Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes or Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth. It was an absolute treat to read, playing with tropes and expectations throughout the book. I’ve loved every minute that I’ve spent in this world, and I hope to get to visit it again soon.

My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for access to an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A House With Good Bones: A Review

Some family secrets are supposed to stay buried.

Sam’s having a rough time. Her post-graduate fieldwork in archaeological entomology is on hold, and so she makes the long trans-Texas drive from Arizona back to North Carolina to live with her mother until the work has funding again. Sam’s mother is living in her own mother’s old house now that Gran Mae is dead, and is happy to have Sam come back home for however long it will last.

The problem is that the house no longer feels like home for Sam. With blandly-painted walls (ugh, ecru), and familiar knickknacks out of sight, the house itself seems to be telling her that something is wrong. Never mind her mom’s behavioral regressions to the days of Gran Mae’s life, or the vultures that are hanging out in the neighborhood. There’s also Gran Mae’s rose garden, which, while stunningly beautiful as ever, is suspiciously devoid of insect life (trust Sam on this one, she’s an entomologist, after all).

Before long, Sam begins to have dreams of her grandmother, and remembers things she said. “The roses say to say your prayers,” and “the underground children will get you…” and not-so-startling fatphobia linger in her memory. But how much of that was real? All is clearly not well on Lammergeier Lane, and Sam is determined to find the answers. Negotiating Southern hospitality and prejudices and overcoming her own fears will be critical.

A House With Good Bones is a quick, fun horror read, y’all. T. Kingfisher has put together one fantastic ride. I loved following Sam on her journey through her family’s past as she strove to save her mom and herself from a disturbing legacy. Not to mention that I will never look at ladybugs (Coccinellidae) the same way again.

My utmost thanks to NetGalley and to the folks at MacMillan/Tor for an eARC of A House With Good Bones in exchange for a fair review. You can snag a copy for yourself starting on March 28th.

Seeds for the Swarm: A Review

I’ve followed Sim Kern on Twitter for a while, and so when they put an open call out for ARCs of Seeds for the Swarm last year, I jumped at the chance. What a perfect companion piece to Annalee Newitz’s The Terraformers. Climate change fiction (or cli-fi), is a hot topic, and Sim handles it marvelously.

Sassparylla “Rylla” McCracken lives in The Dust, a dried-out portion of the United States devastated by manmade climate disasters. Specifically, Rylla and her mom live in a trailer house in Texas, near what remains of the Guadalupe River outside of Austin. Rylla is a high school senior, attending virtual classes and spending her free time studying the insects and other wildlife that are managing to survive in the harsh, dry climate. When she learns that a new piece of corporate legislation is aiming to dam up what’s left of the river, Rylla begs her brother Tyler for a ride to the state capitol, where she delivers an impassioned speech to the apathetic legislature.

Thanks to a video edit of her speech at the capitol going viral, Rylla is approached by representatives from Wingates University, a school located deep in the Lush States where water and other resources are still abundant. Before she knows it, Rylla is whisked away to Michigan, where she is quickly overwhelmed by how different of a world her classmates come from. Rylla is placed in the Humanities department at Wingates, where she is tasked with studying the behaviors that lead to the current state of the world. She also befriends a group of engineering students working on different types of new technologies that they believe can save the planet and the human race.

After a trip through the campus transport system goes wrong, the existence of a secret series of laboratories deep beneath Wingates is uncovered. Soon, Rylla and her classmates finds themselves caught up in a conspiracy of nanotechnology, bioengineering, and political intrigue that could very readily lead to a new civil war, with Rylla’s mother and brother stranded in The Dust. As if just going to college and juggling a social life and homework wasn’t stressful enough…

Seeds for the Swarm is a brilliant piece of climate-focused science fiction, taking an unflinching look at what our world could look like in a few short decades. Rylla is a delightfully and frustratingly human protagonist, reminding me of many of my own college friends (though we didn’t have world-ending tech at our fingertips). Her struggles to fit in among her fellows at school are fantastically well-rendered and realistic. Kern’s vision of the near-future manages to still stay hopeful, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Seeds for the Swarm is available from Stelliform Books on Wednesday, March 1st. Get it from your library or bookstore of choice, and enjoy.

My utmost thanks to Sim and to Ren Hutchings at Stelliform Books for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

The Terraformers: A Review

Dear readers, I have done myself a disservice by not reading Annalee Newitz’s work before now. I had picked up a copy of Autonomous from my library back in 2017, but I never managed to get around to it. Now, I know that I have to come back. Newitz is a phenomenal world builder, and in their latest book, The Terraformers, they do it literally.

The Terraformers tells the story of Destry, a sort of forest ranger of the future. Destry lives on the planet Sask-E (or Sasky, as most of the locals have taken to blending the name), and along with her partner, a moose named Whistle, she has spent centuries carefully guiding the ecosystems into an Earth-like state. Destry and Whistle are members of the Environmental Rescue Team, or ERT, and on Sasky, they work under the corporate authority of Verdance, a real-estate company that deals in planets.

Destry and Whistle are used to working on a slow scale, shaping a world in a way that maintains its harmony. Neither of them is expecting the sudden shift in Sasky politics when a city full of older ERT rangers is found, hidden away from Verdance’s knowledge. Soon, the two are caught up in a storm of corporate ideology, civil rights, and what it means to be a person on a planet that’s isolated from the rest of the universe. After all, terraforming is long series of violent actions, forcing a world into the condition you desire. The tools that are used can be deadly in the wrong hands.

The Terraformers is a deep dive into politics and relationships the likes of which I haven’t read since Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. It’s the story of a planet that spans centuries and generations. It’s dense, queer, sad, and beautiful. My utmost thanks to the folks over at NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review. It’s out today. Go check it out.