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How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying: A Review

Django Wexler’s latest novel has a mouthful of a title, but it’s an absolute blast.

Davi is tired. She’s been living in a time loop for hundreds of years since she first found herself in The Kingdom, restarting in the same place, the same state of existence, every time she dies. Sometimes, that’s only a few hours (or minutes) into a loop. Sometimes it’s been years. Every time she wakes up in a new loop, she’s greeted by the same old wizard who tells her that it’s her destiny to save The Kingdom. She has tried hundreds of times, and so far, has always ended up the same way: failing to defeat the newly arisen Dark Lord and their horde of villains. What’s the phrase? If you can’t beat them, join them.

This time around, Davi decides, things are going to be different. She’s done fighting the Dark Lord, and is going to use her ability (curse?) of respawning to take the title for herself. It’s going to be hard, though. Subverting your destiny isn’t easy, even when you can take a few hundred tries to get it right. Step one. Kill the old wizard for starters. Step two. Find the nearest band of orcs and gain their trust. Step three. Use that orc band and her own knowledge of the local Guild patrols and fighting tactics to take out a crew and get their gear. Step four. Turn that little orc gang to start building up a proper army, and fast.

Oh, did she mention that she’s only got two months or so to get to the Convocation where the new Dark Lord will be selected? Davi needs to get moving if she’s going to get her tenure as Dark Lord on track, but she has no guarantees that things will end any differently than every time she tried to be a hero. After all, the Convocation is held beyond the edge of the map, as far as the Guild is concerned. She has no experience breaking the standard loop of time, and each day she moves beyond her previous routine is one day further that she’ll have to go if she screws up. She’s headed into unknown territory now, and the fate of her adopted world is at stake.

Wexler’s newest novel is perfect for fans of roguelike games like Hades. It’s an absolutely hilarious and unrepentantly horny book, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Wexler’s writing traces a line between homage and irreverent humor, particularly where Davi’s footnotes are concerned (after a few hundred lives, she’s lost track of some of the details of her own background, and her memories from Earth are slightly scrambled). Even better? This is book one of a series. How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is available next Tuesday, May 21st.

My utmost thanks to Orbit Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

The Angel of Indian Lake: A Review

It’s Halloween in Proofrock, Idaho, and all of the ghosts are coming home.

It’s been almost four years since Dark Mill South rampaged through the town, just over eight since the Independence Day Massacre. Jade Daniels, survivor of both of these incidents, is now out of prison and back in her home town, finding a new place to… well, to exist. She can’t be said to be thriving, but that’s to be expected in a town that still largely blames her for the slaughters. She’s taken a position teaching history at the high school, carrying on the legacy of her favorite teacher. History’s a good subject for the girl who needs to know about all of Proofrock’s dangers, after all. Stacy Graves. Ezekiel. Drown Town. After all, she faced down killers twice and lived. Now she’s got medication and therapy, and she’s finally working her way through her trauma (at least as far as the murders go).

But now, The Angel of Indian Lake is the third book in Jade’s story, and that means it’s time for Scream 3’s trilogy rules:

1.) “You’ve got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman. Stabbing him won’t work, shooting him won’t work. Basically in the third one, you gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up.”

2.) “Anyone, including the main character, can die.”

3.) “The past will come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest! Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you.”

On Friday, October 13th, 2023, two of Proofrock’s teens went missing, along with one’s younger brother. Because it has to begin on Friday the 13th. Those disappearances become more significant when bodies are found on Halloween. Jade herself initially dismisses the vanishing teens, even though the older two are her students. Before the bodies are found, she can write it off as a young couple who have taken off to find their fortunes somewhere beyond Idaho, or maybe to save a little brother off to find his errant father. She tries to convince herself that it’s only a coincidence, that a new slasher cycle isn’t starting. It can’t start now, not when Proofrock’s final girl, Letha Mondragon-Tompkins, is out of town. But things are starting to pile up.

There’s a wildfire burning in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and many of the residents of Proofrock are leaving town. The wealthy soon-to-be residents of Terra Nova, across the lake from Proofrock, are desperate to save their under-construction homes from the blaze. They’ve offered a cash reward to anyone who stays to help create a firebreak: $1500 to anyone taking an axe, $3000 to anyone taking a chainsaw. Soon, an impromptu fire brigade has assembled out in the woods, and someone—or something—is stalking them. Local game warden, Seth Mullins, was supposed to be in the fire watchtower, but he’s gone off-grid (and may be the source of the fire). Banner Tompkins, Letha’s husband and Proofrock’s current sheriff, is hoping to set out to the far side of the lake to find Mullins, leaving his and Letha’s daughter Adie at the police station with his secretary. What Banner knows, though, is that several dead bodies have been found, and all signs indicate that they’re Jade’s missing students. Despite Jade’s insistence that there’s not a new slasher in town, Banner isn’t so sure. As the day wears on, things are only going to get worse, and as the rules state, anyone can die this time around.

Stephen Graham Jones has knocked it out of the park with The Angel of Indian Lake. It’s a spectacular, gory finish to the series that instilled me with a love of slasher films. I’ve been a fan of Jones’ writing since I first picked up Mapping the Interior, and this book is a brilliant showcase of his skill. Setting the primary action over the course of a single night and shifting narration fully to Jade’s first-person perspective, he’s pulled all the stops and no punches as Jade breathlessly races toward her destiny. The time of Proofrock’s reckoning is at hand, and for Jade, it’s personal. Let’s go.

My utmost thanks to Saga Press and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. The Angel of Indian Lake is out today. Go get yourself scared.

The Last Bloodcarver: A Review

Once in a while, a book will come along that just surprises the hell out of me in the best way. The Last Bloodcarver is one of those books. The city of Theumas is heavily industrialized, pushing the limits of technology and science. Nhika is struggling to get by, peddling oils and herbs and generally posing as a healer. Thing is? She actually can heal people, reading someone’s body with a single touch to diagnose them. Nhika is a heartsooth, in the tongue of her people. The citizens of Theumas, however, fear the abilities she wields, and call her a bloodcarver. The power to manipulate a a body requires only energy and knowledge, and when Nhika has both, she can be deadly. However, she would far rather honor the memories of her lineage, her deceased parents and grandparents, and all the other heartsooths from the island of Yarong that have gone before her. Nhika is the last surviving member of her family, and to the best of her knowledge, the last heartsooth.

When a scam job goes wrong, Nhika ends up in the clutches of The Butchers, a gang of thieves who deal in rare animals. As far as they’re concerned, a proven bloodcarver is just that, and they plan to sell her to the highest bidder. That bidder turns out to be a 15-year old girl named Mimi. Nhika is whisked away from Butcher’s Row to an elaborate estate and introduced to Mimi’s brother Andao, the and informed that they are the children and heirs of one of Theumas’ leading tech magnates. Their father has died, and they suspect foul play. Only one man was witness to what happened to Mr. Congmi on the night he died, and that witness is now in a coma. It is with the desperate hope that he might have memories of the death that Mimi and Andao sought out Nhika and her abilities. If Nhika can heal him, he might be able to tell the siblings what actually happened to their father.

Nhika must soon begin to navigate the upper echelons of a society that would kill her for her talents, learning more about medicine and politics in order to blend in at the Congmi estate. How long she can keep her secret when the grounds are buzzing with people? Was Mr. Congmi’s death really just an accident? Is that doctor’s young aide flirting with her? Will she be able to find peace in her family’s traditions when everyone she loved is dead?

Vanessa Le has created an enthralling world in The Last Bloodcarver. Using her own Vietnamese heritage as a background, she’s wound magic and history together in an immediately engaging story. This book starts off fast and doesn’t let up. This is planned as book one of a duology, too, and I’m already looking forward to the follow-up work.

The Last Bloodcarver is out from MacMillan today. My utmost thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

The Butcher of the Forest: A Review

I read Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest yesterday, and I’m pretty sure I’m not okay. It’s a fantastic novella, and that’s the problem. It’s too good, and now it’s done.

Veris lives in the valley that is ruled over by the Tyrant. She spends her days raising rabbits and helping her aunt and her grandfather with gardening and other tasks around the house. Most days, that would be more than enough, but today is not like most days.

Today, Veris was shaken out of bed by the Tyrant’s soldiers attempting to tear down her front door. Today, she was put into a carriage and taken to the Tyrant’s castle. Today might be the last day of her life. Last night, the Tyrant’s two children, Eleonor and Aram, vanished into the woods that lie north of the castle. Where the southern woods are often traveled by foragers and hunters, the northern woods are understood by the locals to be dangerous. No one who goes into the northern woods comes out again. Except, that is, for Veris.

Years ago, Veris ventured into those woods to rescue a child, and they both returned. Somehow, that information made its way to the ears of the Tyrant, and now he has had his soldiers drag her to the castle. Today, he has ordered her to find his children and bring them back home, or her life and those of her aunt and grandfather are forfeit. So it is with rapidly dwindling hope that Veris returns to her house to prepare. The northern woods are more dangerous than anyone other than her knows, and all she can do is try. Today, she will gather up her totems and supplies, and she will go to the woods. Today, she will risk everything she has in order to save it from the Tyrant’s whims. Today, she will try to save the children of a monster.

The Butcher of the Forest is quick and beautiful and painful as a knife through the ribs. Premee Mohamed has created a fairy tale to rival legends, with fae creatures and monsters and all the rules one must follow in order to survive. My utmost thanks to Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. It’s available for purchase on February 27th, but if you can, preorder it through your favorite bookstore today. You’ll thank yourself.

System Collapse: A Review

Murderbot is back! Again!

Last time we saw it, publishing-order-wise, was actually a larger step back in time. Fugitive Telemetry took place in between Exit Strategy (book 4) and Network Effect (book 5). Now Martha Wells is following up the plot events from Network Effect with System Collapse, with Murderbot still dealing with the alien contamination that nearly wiped out a corporate colony.

At the outset of System Collapse, Murderbot is definitively not having a good time. Something redacted happened to it, and it is not about to talk to anyone about it. Not its humans, not ART (Asshole Research Transport) or ART’s humans, and not Three, the new rogue SecUnit that’s following in its footsteps toward independence. The struggle against the contaminated humans and the malicious code that infected them has left a mark on Murderbot. To make things worse, that fight may not yet be over. A hidden colony on the same planet has been located, and there’s a possibility that the same alien contamination might have infected it. Murderbot’s humans have decided that they need to investigate, since attempts to contact the colony have gone unanswered.

A rival corporation, Barish-Estranza, already has designs on the planet, regardless of any contamination that may be in place, and finding a group of colonists that they could force into indentured servitude would be icing on the cake. It’s up to Murderbot to find the colonists (if they’re alive) and get them off-world before that can happen. Its performance levels are not anywhere near its standards, and it knows it, but redacted continues to get in the way of it doings its job properly, to the potential risk of its humans. Resources are limited (no armor, less than half of its usual complement of support drones, and no direct communication with ART’s full set of sensors) and its own growing paranoia may just get the better of our favorite rogue SecUnit.

Martha Wells is one of my all-time favorite science fiction writers, and the Murderbot Diaries remain one of the best modern series in the genre. System Collapse is a tight, intense narrative that reminds us just why we love to follow Murderbot’s internal monologue, and why we’ve done so for seven books now. It’s full of corporate criticism and mental health crises, and I absolutely loved it. It’s out in the world today, and I’m incredibly grateful to Tor.com and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for a fair review.

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.

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 Keeper’s Six: A Review

The Beyond is ever-shifting, a fluctuating space of deadly light and impassible dark, filled with dangerous creatures. An adventuring party must consist of six members in order to venture across the Beyond. One Gate (to open the way and find the paths in the shifting wilderness), one Ghost (who becomes a silent, intangible scout once in the Beyond), one Shotgun (the party’s primary combatant), one Voice (the polyglot communications specialist), one Lantern (to light the way), and one Keeper (who remains behind at the group’s Keep, maintaining a stable entry platform that bridges the Beyond and the solid reality of the Realms. These six members make a Hex. Why six? Something about the magic that the dragons use to travel through the Beyond on their own can only be replicated by a group of six. Too many more than that, and the Beyond can destabilize even further. Too few, and you can’t be protected from the various monsters that call that nightmare place home.

Esther is a Lantern, but she’s semi-retired. Her Hex was suspended from operating a year ago, leaving the rest of her closest friends out of work. One night, a mysterious phone call wakes Esther, a single word from David, her son and the Keeper of the Hex. Immediately, she springs into action to gather the other members of the Hex and rally at the Keep to gather information. David, it seems, has been kidnapped, leaving his spouse Kai and their children behind in the unguarded Keep. Someone has captured him, and Esther must journey across the Beyond to find the party responsible. While Marianne, Gus, Lydia, and Faye all answer Esther’s summons, not all of the Hex is happy to see her again, especially since their suspension means that they’re not technically supposed to be operating in the Beyond at all.

So begins a covert mission to find David and bring him safely home. After all, what wouldn’t a parent do to protect their child?

Kate Elliott has crafted a phenomenal sci-fi novella with group mechanics reminiscent of a Dungeons and Dragons party. I’m fascinated by both the Beyond and the many Realms that it links, and I’m honestly sorry that this is my first time tackling one of her stories. I hope that she revisits this world again soon.

The Keeper’s Six is out today. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

My utmost thanks to Tordotcom for providing an eARC of this novella in exchange for a fair review.

And On the Third Day, He Reviewed Again: Tamsyn Muir’s Nona The Ninth

Last July, fans of Tamsyn Muir’s delightful Locked Tomb books were informed that they wouldn’t be getting Alecto the Ninth in the fall of 2021 as they had previously expected. Instead, the Locked Tomb trilogy was going to be expanded into four books, with Alecto still set as the final entry, and Nona the Ninth filling in a gap in 2022.

So we waited, albeit not particularly patiently, for an extra year and a half. Three days ago, that wait came to an end, and last night I finished my preliminary time with Nona. Y’all.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first, okay? This is the 3rd book in a series, and as such, some spoilers for books one and two (Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, respectively) are unavoidable. You have been warned.

SPOILERS FOR GIDEON THE NINTH AND HARROW THE NINTH MAY FOLLOW BELOW:


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Okay. Ready? Here we go.

Nona is an unexpected character, headlining an unexpected, but long-awaited book. The book opens a few months after the end of Harrow the Ninth and the destruction of the Mithraeum. John “God” Gaius has vanished following His betrayal by two of His Lyctors. Gideon the First has been lost to a Resurrection Beast, and his cavalier, Pyrrha Dve is now the sole inhabitant of his body. Camilla Hect has been trading time in control of her body, swapping with the soul of her necromancer, Palamades Sextus (last seen possessing his own skull, which was transformed into a hand by Harrow in Book 2). Together, Pyrrha, Camilla, and Palamades watch over Nona and try to avoid direct conflict with Blood of Eden, a group that stands in opposition to God and the Nine Houses. But who exactly is Nona?

On the outside, Nona is Harrowhark Nonagesimus, whose body was last seen alongside Pyrrha Dve as Augustine the First threw the entirety of the Mithraeum into the River in an attempt to kill God. But the River is full of lost souls, and something happened to the soul of Gideon Nav, who was piloting Harrow’s body. While Harrow’s own soul appeared to have made its way through the River to the Locked Tomb back in the Ninth House at the conclusion of Harrow the Ninth, her body didn’t go along for the ride. Now the body, Nona, has woken up on the world of New Rho. She and her guardians/teachers are busy trying to figure out just which soul (or souls) reside within her. Is she a necromancer? Is she a cavalier? Is she neither or both?

Right now, Nona is a girl looking forward to her first birthday party; a toddler’s attitude in a teen’s body, new to the world and learning quickly about how complicated her life actually is. She’s working as a teacher’s aide at her school, trying to make friends and to fit in with the students. She walks the science teacher’s six-legged dog, Noodle. She loves Noodle. She’s unbothered by the blue light in the sky that seems to be wreaking havoc on any necromancers who wander outside, and she heals almost instantly from any wound, but she shows no aptitude for any other necromancy. She practices with a sword, but has none of a cavalier’s familiarity with the weapon.

Meanwhile, Camilla, Palamades, and Pyrrha are trying to find the rest of the Sixth House, who fled from their former home in an attempt to evade God’s wrath and are now being held captive somewhere on New Rho. Blood of Eden is threatening to destroy a Cohort facility and kill the soldiers and necromancers of the Nine Houses who have taken shelter there. Tensions are rising, and time is running out. Solving the mystery of Nona’s identity is the key to everything, but no one is making it easy. Will God return to New Rho? Will the Resurrection Beast lurking nearby destroy the planet? What other characters will get cameo appearances this time around? Will Nona get to celebrate her first birthday? Is Noodle a good boy? So many questions, so little time.

Nona the Ninth is beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s a perfect addition to The Locked Tomb series. Tamsyn Muir continues to weave plotlines, juggle bodies and souls, and blend humor and horror in a way that boggles my mind. While the finale is still (hopefully only) a year away, Nona is a wonderful treat for readers. Plenty of twists and turns will keep everyone guessing right up until the end, and then the wild theories can begin again! I can’t wait for Alecto, but I’m so glad to have Nona to keep me company between now and then.

I’m going to go read it again.

The Kaiju Preservation Society: A Review

I was in middle school the first time I saw the word “kaiju” in print. I was on a Godzilla kick, because I was in middle school, and Godzilla books had been readily available for a few years at that point, thanks mostly (I guess) to Roland Emmerich’s 1998 film. I had been to my parents’ bookstore and found a couple of mass market paperbacks of other Godzilla titles, and started to learn my way around the other residents of Monster Island. A love of the giant creatures was born that has persisted to this day, across films like Pacific Rim and the films and comics within the Godzilla franchise. Now imagine my joy when one of my favorite sci-fi writers announced an upcoming novel titled The Kaiju Preservation Society.

John Scalzi is a remarkably fun writer to read, and since it’s been a while since the last time I read one of his books, I’d forgotten that. TKPS is a ridiculously fun ride. When Jamie Gray loses his job in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, he turns to delivering food around New York in an attempt to keep up with his bills. This brings him into contact with Tom, an old college friend who tells Jamie that he has a job opportunity for him with a group that does preservation work for large animals. What Jamie was not expecting was for that job to be on the other side of a dimensional barrier separating our Earth from an alternate one populated by nuclear-powered creatures the size of apartment buildings.

Jamie emerges on the other side of the barrier to find a small scientific research base, where he will serve as a gofer for the numerous scientists studying the kaiju that inhabit this parallel world. He quickly makes friends and becomes acclimated to the bizarre biology of the local populace, learning what a threat virtually everything on that side of the barrier is (in short, everything will either kill you or try really hard to do so). Rapidly changing circumstances lead Jamie to understand, however, that not everyone associated with The Kaiju Preservation Society is as well-intentioned as he is, as an impending disaster threatens everyone and everything on both sides of the rift.

This was a fast-paced, very fun novel, that reads like a mashup of Pacific Rim and Jurassic Park. My only complaint is that we don’t get to spend a lot of time in the world, and I would love to see Scalzi release a sequel at some point down the line. The Kaiju Preservation Society is out in stores tomorrow, March 15th. Go get yourself a copy asap. My utmost thanks to Macmillan/Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.