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Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me: A Review

BEWARE! HERE THERE BE SPOILERS FOR BOOK ONE!

SERIOUSLY. GO READ BOOK ONE.

Did you do it? Okay.

Cool. Here we go.

Hail Dark Lord Davi!

Last time we checked in with Davi, she’d successfully manipulated the time loops that she’d been experiencing since she first woke up in The Kingdom, roughly 1,000 years ago (by her own personal reckoning). Since that day, when the wizard Tserigern first told her that she was the Chosen One, fated to save The Kingdom from the Dark Lord, she’s lived and died thousands of times. Each time, beginning a new time loop has allowed Davi to take advantage of her own memories and predict the actions of others around her. Each time, she’s failed to save The Kingdom. So, back at the beginning of Django Wexler’s absolutely brilliant How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, she started a new tactic—killing Tserigern and setting off on a path to become the Dark Lord (surprise! Bet you didn’t see that coming).

Finally arriving on the far side of the continent and triumphing over her rivals, Davi now stood at the head of a massive horde of wilders with her second in command, the orc woman, Tsav, at her side (as well as frequently in her bed). With Artaxes, the arbiter of the challenges, having officially crowned her as Dark Lord Davi, all that remained was… wait… what happens now?

See, during the challenges, Davi died. Again. Only this time, she didn’t reset back to the beginning with Tserigern. She only went back one day. The rules changed, and suddenly consequences meant something again. Now, Davi faces a new problem. If she doesn’t want to lose all of the progress that she’s finally made in her march to power (and her relationship with Tsav), she’s going to have to stop treating the other people around her as tools and stepping stones. So, new list of tasks: 1.) Convince the wilders that they don’t have to kill all the humans. 2.) Convince the humans that they don’t have to kill the wilders. 3.) Not die.

No big deal, right? Davi sets off from the wilderness back to The Kingdom to uncover the mysteries of how humans ended up in this world in the first place, what changed about the time loops, and, if she’s The Chosen One, who did The Choosing.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me is another brilliant, darkly hilarious fantasy adventure from Django Wexler, and is a perfect ending to Davi’s long, long, long life. The footnotes throughout continue to annotate Davi’s incredibly ADHD approach to things (supplementing many of her thoughts with her own intrusive thoughts based on her fading memories of our world). Wexler’s humor ensures that Davi’s journey isn’t too fraught, but there’s definitely more consequences for her actions this time around.

It’s out in the world today, May 27th. Get yourself a copy, and dive in!

My utmost thanks to Orbit Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. I’m pretty glad I didn’t need a time loop to get it.

OR DID I?!

The Staircase in the Woods: A Review

“On Friday, June 5th, 1998, five teenagers went into the woods surrounding Highchair Rocks in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Only four of them came out.” – Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

So begins Wendig’s latest novel. That summer night, Owen, Hamish, Nick, Matty, and Lauren went camping. The Covenant, as they called themselves, was bound by solemn promises to protect each other from bullies, to collaborate on homework so none of them fell behind, and so on. That night in the woods, high atop the cliffs, they find something impossible. A staircase, spiraling upward with no remnants of other structure around, no indications of how it had gotten there, or why. When no obvious answers could be found, most of the group decided to leave it be and go back to their campsite. Something about the staircase continues to eat at Matty, though, and so he invokes the Covenant (despite being told that’s not how it works) to get everyone else to go back with him and see what awaits them at the top.

Reluctantly, the other four teens trail along only to watch in shock and horror as, at the final stair, Matty vanishes. There’s no sign of him again.

The days and weeks after are chaos as the four survivors struggle to process what happened and to come up with a cohesive lie to tell to the police about what happened to their missing friend. They face relentless questioning about where they last saw him, who they talked to, and where he could have gone. The only problem is, none of them really know where Matty went, and the staircase is gone too, eliminating the possibility of anyone following after him.

Now, decades have passed, and the four surviving members of The Covenant have done their best to move on with their lives until an email arrives from Nick. He’s dying. Cancer. He wants to get the old gang together one last time before he’s gone, so he offers to fly all of them out to see him. He even invokes The Covenant to ensure that, despite all of the myriad issues they’ve developed as they’ve aged, they’ll come. And so they do.

Upon arrival, they quickly realize that Nick wasn’t being entirely honest with them. Instead of a nice get-together, he leads them off into the woods where, against all sense, they find the staircase again. It’s not the same place, but they know, somehow, that it’s the same staircase. He urges them to climb with him. A chance, he says, to do the right thing. To go find Matty.

To bring him back.

And, in the name of The Covenant, they follow.

The Staircase in the Woods is a brilliant, dark piece of horror from Wendig in the vein of Stephen King’s It (friends coming back together again as adults to face the evil they couldn’t defeat in their youth). The members of The Covenant have fallen away from each other, and they’re going to confront more than just the mysteries that lie at the top of the staircase if they’re going to have any chance of making it out of the woods again. I love Wendig’s horror (see my recent review of Black River Orchard) and I’m certain that most of you will too.

The Staircase in the Woods is out today from Del Rey books. My utmost thanks to them and to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Advocate: A Review

Aelis is back again! Daniel M. Ford returns to the world we first explored in The Warden and Necrobane, and damn if Advocate isn’t another stellar entry in the series. At the end of Necrobane, Warden Aelis de Lenti had been notified that Bardun Jacques, her mentor from her warden training days, was arrested for murder. Word came to the frontier town of Lone Pine that the Archmagister has requested Aelis return to the city of Lascenise to serve as his Advocate, a role supplemental to his lawyer, and a position that can only be filled by another Warden. She must help to search for information that can prove his innocence, or he will most likely be put to death.

Aelis is loathe to leave her post behind, even if she only intends for it to be temporary. There are many things in Lone Pine that require her near-constant attention, and the people there have finally come to fully trust in her presence and skill. She’s almost starting to think of her sheep-shit-scented tower as home. Decent progress for a rich socialite trained as a Necromancer, really. But Bardun Jacques is the man who is most responsible for Aelis’s success as a student at the Lyceum, so she begins to pack her things for the long journey. She reassures the people that she has come to love that she’ll be back as soon as she can, hopefully with more answers for one particular person, and a particularly difficult problem that’s been plaguing her since Necrobane.

Aelis’s trip with back south to Lascenise with fellow Warden Amadin is interrupted when their carriage is attacked. This attempt on her life helps Aelis to realize that there are far bigger things at stake than just the career of one old wizard. She’s going to have to choose her allies carefully if she’s going to succeed and survive. Being back on familiar ground can only serve as so much of an advantage when there’s a full-blown conspiracy of theft and assassination coming to light. Still, she’s grown a lot during her time at her station in Lone Pine, and a Warden with three schools of magic at her disposal is nothing to mess with, unless you have a great deal of power and influence to wield yourself.

Daniel M. Ford continues to be a powerhouse of a fantasy writer. As he delves into more of Aelis’s history (academic and otherwise), he showcases more of a spectacular magic school and its surrounds. The Lyceum is every bit as wondrous as you would want a magical college to be, complete with a library that rivals those found in The Name of the Wind and Shadow of the Torturer. His combat scenes are tight, well-choreographed, and intense, and his worldbuilding remains top-notch. I loved every page of Advocate, and I hope that you do as well.

Advocate hits store and library shelves on April 22nd. Get ready. And hope, like I do, that there’s more to come.

My utmost thanks as always to Netgalley and Tor for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Swordheart: A Review

New T. Kingfisher? New T. Kingfisher!

Okay, new-ish. Swordheart was first published back in 2018, but it’s getting a shiny new reprint courtesy of Tor’s Bramble imprint. So, new!

Halla doesn’t have a lot in her life. Her husband died years ago, and she’s been living in her great-uncle Silas’s home, caring for him and the household in his old age. She describes herself as a respectable widow, and while she is infinitely curious, she’s also relatively content to live has she has been.

Silas’s death changes everything. Due to Halla’s having cared for him, he left her (and her alone) all of his possessions in his will, and his other relatives are livid at the perceived slight. Her great-aunt Malva and cousin Alver vow to lock Halla up in her room until she agrees to marry Alver, so that Silas’s house and things will remain in their possession. In her desperation, Halla decides to kill herself, drawing a sword that was in Silas’s collection. Her attempt to stab herself is cut short when a man appears in the room with her. His name is Sarkis, and he is bound to the sword that she just drew. Remove the sword from the scabbard, and you can command him, a la a genie in a lamp. With a duty to protect Halla, as she is the rightful owner of the sword now that Silas has died, Sarkis sets about freeing her from her imprisonment.

After breaking out of what is, by all rights, Halla’s own house now, she and Sarkis flee the small town of Rutger’s Howe (and I can’t help thinking that T. Kingfisher is a Blade Runner fan). They set off on a journey to secure Halla’s inheritance so that she has something to bequeath to her own nieces, having no children of her own, but there are many obstacles in their path. Soon, they have to face off against brigands, lawyers, priests, and unspeakable horrors. With the assistance of Zale (a representative of the Church of the White Rat) and a gnole named Brindle, the adventurers journey from Rutger’s Howe to Archen’s Glory. They need not only to prove that Halla is the rightful heir to Silas’s house and the sword that contains Sarkis, but also solve the mystery of Sarkis’s entrapment in the sword almost 500 years prior.

And what’s an adventure in a medieval-inspired fantasy world without a little romance? This is a Bramble title, after all. Halla is a respectable widow, and Sarkis is an ancient soul bound to an iron blade. That’s not about to stop either of them from developing feelings toward each other. They might be able to eventually tell each other the truth, but truth is often more complicated than it should be. Is Halla attracted to Sarkis only because he saved her life? Is Sarkis only attracted to Halla because he’s been barely able to live as a man over the last few centuries of sword-dwelling? Is it right for a widow to fall in love with her bodyguard and vice versa?

Set in the same world as Kingfisher’s Saints of Steel series, Swordheart will delight fans who will recognize elements of Halla’s journey (and maybe several of the characters she meets along the way). For me, it was my first foray into the world of the White Rat, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Halla is delightfully disarming and has much to learn about the world outside of her small home town, while Sarkis is brusque and harsh but slowly comes to understand the people of the “decadent south” as time passes with her. The influence each has on the other is slow-building, but masterfully written. The reprinted version of Swordheart hits shelves Tuesday, February 25th. Check it out.

My utmost thanks to Tor/Reactor/Bramble and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Witch Queen of Redwinter: A Review

And now the story of Raine Wildrose does come to an end. A little over a year ago, I was introduced to Ed McDonald’s spectacular fantasy series when I was offered an advance copy of Traitor of Redwinter. I hadn’t read the first book, but I was so intrigued by the concept that I binged the audio version of book one in order to get through book two by publication day. Now the trilogy has come to an end.

Previously, Raine learned that her lord and trainer among the Draoihn, Ulovar LacNaithe, was dying. As it happened, his strength of magic was being drained from him and channeled into his nephew, Ovitus LacNaithe. Under the manipulation of Sul, one of the Fallen Lords, Ovitus was positioning himself to take over the leadership of the Draoihn of Redwinter. Ulovar sacrificed himself to grant Raine the power she needed to escape Ovitus’s clutches, and Grandmaster Robilar sealed herself in stone to stop Sul. Ovitus, however, remains in power. Now he seeks desperately to access the Crown that lies beneath the castle at Harranir, but without access to the Fourth Gate of the Draoihn, he can’t gain entry to the Blackwell where the Keystone lies in store. No Keystone means no entry to the Crown itself. No Draoihn who remain loyal to Ovitus can access the Fourth Gate, and his own attempt to take his uncle’s was cut short by Ulovar’s death.

Raine’s connection to the Sixth Gate, the Gate of Death, is now undeniable. She is one of the Sarathi. She died a third time at Sul’s hands, only to be saved by Sanvaunt’s awakening of the Fifth Gate’s healing powers. Thanks to Esher and Sanvaunt’s intervention, all three of them managed to flee from Ovitus. Now, however, they are trapped in the Fault, a sort of in-between world filled with half-dead creatures and the other Fallen Lords. The trio’s only hope for survival lies with The Queen of Feathers, the mysterious woman who has been guiding Raine since the day she first met Ulovar. Raine believes her to be imprisoned somewhere within the Fault, but journeying anywhere there is a painful undertaking. Getting out of the Fault is only the beginning, though. Raine is filled with the memories of the other Sixth Gate users who came before her, and she must learn to use their power without losing herself if she and Sanvaunt and Esher are going to have any chance to save the world. Raine also desperately wants to save the two of them, but is torn between her love for each of them and their feelings for one another.

The Redwinter Chronicles very quickly became one of my favorite series. Ed McDonald has written a spectacular and clever fantasy version of the UK. Raine is a complicated protagonist, frequently conflicted in her choices due to her forbidden abilities to see the dead. Now coming into the full potential of her power, she’s going to be dealing with more difficult decisions than ever before. The fate of the world is at stake, and the only person who can save it is the one thing the people fear the most: a witch queen.

Witch Queen of Redwinter is available as of last Tuesday, November 12th. Go check it out. My utmost thanks to Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group for the eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Don’t Let the Forest In: A Review

Spooky times call for spooky stories, and few times are spookier than the week of Hallowe’en. So it is with great pleasure that I present my review of Don’t Let the Forest In, a young adult novel from CG Drews. Don’t Let the Forest In is a psychological horror novel set in a prestigious boarding school, Wickwood Academy. It’s there that Australian-born twins, Andrew and Dove, first met Thomas. This is the trio’s senior year, but even on the first day back, everything seems to be going wrong.

Dove and Andrew have been fighting before they even arrive at the school, and all Andrew wants to do is find Thomas so that the three of them can resume their standard undefeatable crew behavior. Thomas is acting oddly, though, even for him. He seems more on edge than usual, there’s blood dried on his shirt, and he’s not talking to Dove. Previously, Andrew would write stories to vent his darker side. Thomas would illustrate them. Dove would serve as the boys’ connection to the real world, anchoring them and helping them through their academic struggles. Now, police are showing up to question Thomas about his parents’ whereabouts, and Andrew doesn’t know if he can even trust his twin. He doesn’t want to alienate Dove by discussing the way he feels about Thomas, he doesn’t want to risk losing Thomas by admitting that there may be more than just friendship between them, and he really doesn’t want to think about the possibility that Dove and Thomas are already engaging in a more serious relationship.

As the year grinds on and Thomas seems to be more exhausted, though, a secret comes out. He’s been sneaking out of the school into the woods at night to fight monsters, his own drawings come to life. The darkness within Andrew’s stories spilling from the pages of Thomas’s sketchbook now threatens everyone at Wickwood. While Andrew volunteers to go out in the dark to do battle alongside Thomas, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be enough. Even destroying the sketchbook doesn’t stop the horrors from tumbling out into reality. Andrew already knows he would kill to protect Thomas. If it comes to it, could he kill Thomas in order to save Dove and the rest of his schoolmates?

Don’t Let the Forest In is a fantastically dark adventure, and I’m ridiculously grateful to NetGalley and MacMillan for sending me an eARC in exchange for a fair review. It’s out in the world as of yesterday, October 29th, and is an absolutely perfect Hallowe’en read. Go get it.

Gravity Lost: A Review

L.M. Sagas won me over earlier this year with the spectacular sci-fi/found family novel Cascade Failure. Today, she’s back with a sequel!

It’s been a few months since the events of Cascade Failure and the Guild crew of the Ambit have been spending their days watching over Drestyn, the agitator who’s quest for revenge led to the events of the first book. While they anonymously leaked a large number of Trust records in the aftermath, their captive still holds many more. So as Jal is recovering from his injuries, Saint, Nash, and Captain Eoan help out with the security shifts that monitor the Guild’s prison cell. Should be an easy detail, but nothing is ever as easy as it should be.

The day that Drestyn is transferred from the Guild station, Saint and Nash are led on a chase through the underbelly by none other than Jal. Turns out that some of Drestyn’s buddies have a plan to break him out, and that starts with kidnapping Jal’s sister. As soon as Jal breaks the news to the rest of the Ambit crew, they set off to find the kidnappers, with Jal’s niece in tow. Our lovable found family of misfits may even have to save Drestyn himself along the way, lest the secrets he holds do more harm.

Like its predecessor, Gravity Lost is a great ride. It’s fun, creative sci-fi with nice modern pop culture nods here and there that help it feel grounded in our reality. It’s a solid and successful follow-up, and helps to better build out the universe that Sagas introduced us to earlier this year. Go check it out for yourself. Gravity Lost was released on Tuesday, 7/23. Thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

The West Passage: A Review

There is a great evil approaching. The last Guardian of the West Passage is dead, and rather than officially naming her apprentice as her successor, she used her last words to give him a single command. “Tell Black it’s coming.”

Kew should have been named as the next Hawthorn of Grey, the new Guardian, the most recent of a long line of people to hold the name and the title designating him for duties not fully understood in living memory. Now he must make the journey from the Grey Tower to the Black Tower in order to pass along his teacher’s message. If he can accomplish this, then he might prove himself worthy of recognition as a Hawthorn, taking the place he has been training for all his life.

Pell is an apprentice to the Women in Grey, an ancient order who exist to provide funerary care to the other people of the city. When Hawthorn is brought to the women for her funeral, Pell briefly crosses paths with Kew and sneaks away with a book that Hawthorn had in her possession.

The first indicator that something is wrong occurs during Hawthorn’s services, when her funerary mask is accidentally broken. Between that and the theft of the book, Pell begins to fear that her actions are bringing time itself out of alignment, with snow beginning to fall in what should be the middle of summer. Rats are pouring out of statues, and none of the women can be bothered to guess if something is truly amiss.

Jared Pechaček has created a somehow vibrant ruined world, reminiscent of Gene Wolfe’s Book of New Sun, blending things both magical and technological and decades or centuries past their prime. Frankly, I love worldbuilding that deliberately hides or doesn’t worry about how everything works, leaving plenty of mysteries in place. A massive palace ruled over by the Ladies (mysterious and powerful giant beings) serves as the setting for the entire novel, and it’s filled with ominous creatures as well as new allies for Kew and Pell as they go their separate ways to set things right.

The West Passage came out on Tuesday, 7/16, and it’s an absolute joy of a novel. It’s weird and truly fantastic, and I can’t wait to see what Pechaček does next. My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Bury Your Gays: A Review

In which Chuck Tingle goes to Hollywood.

Misha Byrne is a screenwriter, and he’s just locked in his first Oscar nomination. He’s also gay, and executive meddling is on the cusp of forcing him to kill off the two queer leads of his latest TV series. Nearly four seasons of wildly successful X-Files-esque television, and he’s finding his work being subject to one of the oldest tropes in fiction: bury your gays. For Misha, this is particularly egregious, as his favorite childhood show fell victim to the same treatment years before. However, if he doesn’t go along with the studio’s plans, he’ll be in breach of contract and lose his job, and potentially any chance of working in Hollywood again.

Then, things start to get weird at the studio lot. Raymond Nelson, one of the oldest working animators at the studio, is crushed by a piano in an ironic echo of a cartoon death. Not long after, Misha spots a character from one of his horror films while walking out of a bar. This omen warns him that he has only five day to live, a timeline that coincides with the night of the Academy Awards ceremony. Soon, more of his horror characters begin intruding into his life, and he’s forced to face the very real traumas that shaped his career (and are threatening his boyfriend). Will Misha succumb to studio pressure by Oscar night, or will he fall to a twisted version of one of his own creations?

Chuck Tingle is absolutely killing it in the horror genre, y’all. Bury Your Gays is littered with little nods to actual Hollywood staples, all while carefully avoiding name-dropping any specific real world studio. Tingle builds phenomenal tension and intersperses some clever screenwriting aspects between segments of the story. This is a brilliant follow-up to last year’s Camp Damascus, and further solidifies Chuck as a horror writer of note. My utmost thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Bury Your Gays is out as of yesterday, 7/9/24. Go get it.

Unexploded Remnants: A Review

Alice is the last surviving human in the universe, and she’s on the run. When she was exploring the Alta Sidoie market, she found something in a scrap collector’s booth that was far more than met the eye. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t the only one who recognized it. Now she’s being chased throughout an intergalactic portal network by a warmongering alien race that wants to use the weapon-controlling AI she found to attack anyone who has ever wronged them.

Alice fell into the portal network by chance, an accidental bit of access from a world that wasn’t supposed to be able to connect. She was observed by the Archive, one of the unifying forces for good in the universe, and sent back to report on humanity as a whole. Eventually Earth’s conflicts grew to the point where the Archive opted to quarantine the world instead of attempting to keep helping, leaving humans to their own slow self-destruction. Alice, however, was allowed to keep performing work for them. Now alongside her virtual assistant, Bugs, she’s employed as a blend of archaeologist and grave robber for the Archive, trading in favors and information as well as artifacts.

Alice has her hands on the key to one of the most powerful remaining weapons in the galaxy, and the enemy is closing in. The AI is a threat to everyone, but Alice is determined to save Gunn, the being trapped in the heart of the artifact. She doesn’t know who she can fully trust, but she’s going to do whatever it takes to free him.

Elaine Gallagher has packed a tremendous amount of detail into a very small package with Unexploded Remnants. This novella is fast-paced and a hell of a lot of fun. World hopping action and clever characters reminiscent of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and Evelyn O’Connor make for a quick, entertaining read that still manages to provide commentary on weapons of war and how we treat soldiers.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Unexploded Remnants is out today, 6/25/24. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.