Review: Fall by Tracy Clark

Review: Fall by Tracy ClarkFall (Detective Harriet Foster #2) by Tracy Clark
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Detective Harriet Foster #2
Pages: 347
Published by Thomas & Mercer on December 5, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

In the second book in the Detective Harriet Foster thriller series, author Tracy Clark weaves a twisted journey into the underbelly of Chicago as Harriet and her team work to unmask a serial killer stalking the city’s aldermen.
The Chicago PD is on high alert when two city aldermen are found dead: one by apparent suicide, one brutally stabbed in his office, and both with thirty dimes left on their bodies—a betrayer’s payment. With no other clues, the question is, Who else has a debt to pay?
Detective Harriet Foster is on the case before the killer can strike again. But even with the help of her partner, Detective Vera Li, and the rest of their team, Harriet has little to go on and a lot at risk. There’s no telling who the killer’s next target is or how many will come next.
To stop another murder, Harriet and her officers will have to examine what the victims had going on behind the scenes to determine who could be tangled up in this web of betrayal…and who could be out for revenge

My Review:

When we first catch back up with Detective Harriet Foster, she’s in the midst of a doomed attempt to get closure for the unclosable. She’s attending the sentencing hearing of the young man who murdered her son. As much as everyone in her family wants her to – not so much put it behind her because that’s impossible – start living in the present and the future she has rather than the past she can’t change and can’t return to.

But when we first met Harri back in Hide, she was also still grieving the suicide of her police partner Glynnis Thompson. While closure for that loss may still be elusive, Harri does get at least a reason for that seemingly unreasonable act. A reason that is clearly going to dog her footsteps for months if not years to come.

What makes this second entry in the series so compelling is its deep dive into the seemingly baked in ways and means that the sausage of Chicago city government gets made. And seemingly always has been.

That a former alderman, convicted of corruption, gets out of prison after serving her time may be newsworthy as it happens – just as her trial and conviction three years before was – but it isn’t at all unusual. It’s just part of the way that ‘business’ in the City of Chicago has always been done.

Howsomever, that the aldermen who should have gone to prison with her – but whose names seem to have been barely whispered during the course of the investigation – start dropping like flies the minute she gets out is not only newsworthy, it’s juicy news at that. The kind of news that he newsies are all over like a bad rash.

Because that former alderman, Marin Shaw, should be the prime suspect for the killings. And in some people’s minds, she is. But not to Detective Foster and her current partner Vera Li. Because down in the dirt of Chicago politics and power, there are simply too many motives for killing an alderman or two, or even three.

Especially when one of the victims is the kingpin of a whole network of dirty City dealing not done remotely dirt cheap.

To the two experienced cops, it looks like a frame that someone is trying to make former alderman Marin Shaw fit into. But it doesn’t, quite, because the motives are as elusive as the killer has been, and they’ve been looking in the wrong direction all along. As they were intended to.

Escape Rating A++: I finished this at 3 in the morning because I simply could not put it down. I mean, I tried, but I just couldn’t let this one go until the end. An ending like black coffee, tasty but bitter, with a solid kick at the finish.

In other words, there are plenty of reasons why this book has ended up on so many “Best of the Year” lists – and quite possibly will mine as well. It is even better than the first book in the series, Hide, and provides an even more in-depth look at a damaged person doing her best in a broken system to make each day count for others – even if she can’t make them count for herself.

Detective Harriet Foster is compelling in her brokenness. I want to say that she’s strong in the broken places, but she’s not there yet. She’s putting one foot forward, one day at a time, and giving what of herself she feels she has left to her job of saving somebody else’s son because she couldn’t save her own.

She isn’t ready to put her own life together, but she’s reaching for the point where she can at least put her work life back together, when someone tries to pull that rug out from under her. The questions that get raised about her partner’s death do not get resolved in this entry in the series, leading to a fascinating ending of a cliffhanger that isn’t a cliffhanger. This case is resolved, Harri’s problems are just beginning.

At the heart of this one, however, is the mystery. And not so much for the mystery itself, as much as I enjoyed getting caught up in the clues and in Harri and Li’s investigation. But it’s what she’s investigating that adds the compulsive factor. Because that investigation creates a portrait of Chicago politics that manages to read both as the corruption the way that popular imagination has painted it AND as the way that the city’s newspapers cover it, all at the same time. And that feels entirely too true to life.

What gave the case a very nice twist at the end was that, as much fun as the dive into the political muck was to read, the motive for the murders wasn’t part of that muck. Not that it wasn’t mucky and murky in its own right, but it wasn’t the usual muck when it comes to Chicago politics which made for a more satisfying resolution – at least for this reader.

Anytime that a story keeps me up until 3 in the morning, I want more than I have. Not more of this particular book, because it was the right story at the right length at the right time, but more like this or more of these characters or both. Definitely both.

If you have that same impulse after you finish Hide and Fall (and do read both because the series just keeps getting awesomer as it goes), if Detective Harriet Foster, with her damage and her dangerous investigations into the broken places and people of Chicago grab your attention, you might also want to check out Inspector Anjelica Henley and the dark and dirty parts of her London, because the two are very much sisters under the skin with their respective city’s grit under their nails. The first book in the Henley series by Nadine Matheson is The Jigsaw Man.

As I’ve already read the Henley series, I’ll have to look for something else to tide me over until the next book in one or the other appears. (That’s The Kill List for Anjelica Henley in September and Echo for Harriet Foster next December. Tracy Clark has another Chicago-set mystery series, the Cass Raines series, that begins with Broken Places. I always enjoy a trip to Chicago, so I’ll be giving that a look while I wait for Harriet Foster’s next investigation.

Review: Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen Spotswood

Review: Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen SpotswoodMurder Crossed Her Mind (Pentecost and Parker #4) by Stephen Spotswood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Pentecost and Parker #4
Pages: 384
Published by Doubleday Books on December 5, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The latest action-packed installment in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost & Parker Mystery series follows Lillian and Will tracking the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much. From the author of Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin.
Vera Bodine, an elderly shut-in with an exceptional memory, has gone missing and famed detective Lillian Pentecost and her crackerjack assistant Willowjean "Will" Parker have been hired to track her down. But the New York City of 1947 can be a dangerous place, and there's no shortage of people who might like to get ahold of what's in Bodine's head.
Does her disappearance have to do with the high-profile law firm whose secrets she still keeps; the violent murder of a young woman, with which Bodine had lately become obsessed; or is it the work she did with the FBI hunting Nazi spies intent on wartime sabotage? Any and all are on the suspect list, including their client, Forest Whitsun, hotshot defense attorney and no friend to Pentecost and Parker.
The clock is ticking to get Bodine back alive, but circumstances conspire to pull both investigators away from the case. Will is hot on the trail of a stickup team who are using her name--and maybe her gun--for their own ends. While Lillian again finds herself up against murder-obsessed millionaire Jessup Quincannon, who has discovered a secret from her past--something he plans to use to either rein the great detective in . . . or destroy her.
To solve this mystery, and defeat their own personal demons, the pair will have to go nose-to-nose with murderous gangsters, make deals with conniving federal agents, confront Nazi spies, and bend their own ethical rules to the point of breaking. Before time runs out for everyone.

My Review:

It’s still 1947 in this fourth entry in the Pentecost and Parker series, not too long after the conclusion of the previous book, Secrets Typed in Blood, and still very much under the influence of those events.

Willowjean Parker, is private detective Lillian Pentecost’s right-hand woman, still a bit sensitive about her roots as a ‘cirky girl’ and still in a bit of mourning for the people she left behind when she ran away FROM the circus after running away TO that circus to escape her abusive father.

But she’s proud of her accomplishments as a licensed private detective, and embarrassed, chagrined and downright ashamed when she gets mugged by a couple of two-bit con artists working Coney Island, getting coshed with her own sap and losing her favorite purse with its IDs, keys, and brand new – and registered – gun when she breaks up what she believed was an attempted rape – only to get suckered into a situation that she really should have seen coming a mile away.

Which turns out to be a kind of metaphor for this whole case, as in her haste to cover up her own mess she falls right into an even bigger one – and very nearly loses her boss’ trust into the bargain.

It starts as a missing persons case, brought to Pentecost and Parker by their least favorite lawyer, Forest Whitsun. When Whitsun had Pentecost on the stand in their latest confrontation, he implied that she was not just physically incapacitated by her progressing multiple sclerosis, but mentally compromised into that very bad bargain.

Having him show up at their door as a prospective client, that he trusts their expertise enough for him to ask Pentecost to help him locate a missing friend, is rather a surprise. Although not nearly as much of a surprise as discovering that Whitsun has actual friends and that any of them are female and almost, sorta/kinda, mother-figures in a life that seems bereft of all emotional contacts.

That his friend was a hoarder is a shock to everyone’s system. That she was so famous for her prodigious memory that she was the ace-in-the-hole for a high-powered white shoe law firm AND was recruited by the FBI during the late war is an even bigger shock.

That Will finds her body hidden in the piles of detritus choking her apartment – not so much.

But the ensuing shenanigans raise questions about Pentecost’s history, bring up the specters of one of her greatest enemies and poke holes in a whole lot of people’s lives. Because it’s pretty clear that Vera Bodine’s death was related to some secret that someone felt they had to kill to keep.

But the woman knew so many that it’s hard for even Pentecost and Parker to determine which of the many, many motives surrounding this very secretive woman was the one that caused her death.

Before it causes, not a second woman to die, but a third. Or perhaps a fourth.

Escape Rating A++: Murder Crossed Her Mind was an actual, literally, honest-to-goodness one sitting read for me. I started it thinking I’d read for an hour or so before bed, and then just stayed there reading. And stayed. And STAYED. Until it was done nearly four hours later. Hence that A++ rating because I simply could not put this down until Pentecost and Parker knew everything and staged a great – but still slightly speculative – reveal at the end.

Even though they, and I, both know that those things work better on TV than they do in a real case. Then again, their lawyer-client has been compared to Perry Mason, so the TV-worthy ending fits right into the feel of, well, everything.

What continues to make this series shine is the voice of its narrator, ‘Will’ Parker, who serves as Lillian Pentecost’s right-hand and leg-woman, as well as, increasingly as the series goes on, her investigative partner.

What makes this series, let’s call it ‘inspired by’ by the classic Nero Wolfe series, is that while the stories are set in the immediate post-World War II period, and is clearly heading straight into the strait-jacket of the 1950s, Will’s voice feels more contemporary to us even as she observes the times in which she lives.

Which works because, while we know the date of the period Will is narrating for the story, we don’t know when she’s narrating it FROM. It’s obviously later, she’s clearly older, sadder and wiser, but the world changed a LOT from the late 1940s to, for example, the 1970s and 1980s. Will’s in her 20s when this story takes place, so the possibility that she’s looking back from 30 or 40 years on and is still alive to do so is quite plausible and allows her to be a bit outside her time.

What made the case work, both as a mystery and as an interesting story in its own right, was the mysterious figure of Perseverance Bodine at its heart. She had the gift of perfect recall, and that gift gave her a financially secure life while allowing her to work in the shadows. But as a woman, it was all too easy for her to be seen as a mere helper with a freakishly useful talent rather than as the mover and shaker she could have been – or perhaps should have been.

It was also a bit different because it was never about what enemies Vera might have made – because she didn’t. Instead, it was about which secret someone could least afford her to reveal, which made the investigation just that much more complicated.

I was enthralled from the very first page, and this one just didn’t let go of me until the end. I’ve been just as caught up in every single one of the Pentecost and Parker mysteries so far, from their very first outing in Fortune Favors the Dead, through Murder Under her Skin, Secrets Typed in Blood and now this latest entry in the series, which dammit ends on a ginormous cliffhanger. So there’d better be a FIFTH book in this fantastic series! I just hope we don’t have too long to wait…

Review: Generation Ship by Michael Mammay

Review: Generation Ship by Michael MammayGeneration Ship by Michael Mammay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Pages: 608
Published by Harper Voyager on October 17, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

In this riveting, stand-alone novel from Michael Mammay, author of  Planetside,  the beginning of a new human colony must face tyrannical leaders, revolution, crippling instability, and an unknown alien planet that could easily destroy them all. In 2108, Colony Ship  Voyager  departed Earth for the planet of Promissa with 18,000 of the world’s best and brightest on board. 250 years and 27 light years later, an arrival is imminent. But all is not well. The probes that they’ve sent ahead to gather the data needed to establish any kind of settlement aren’t responding, and the information they have received has presented more questions than answers. It’s a time when the entire crew should be coming together to solve the problem, but science officer Sheila Jackson can’t get people to listen. With the finish line in sight, a group of crewmembers want an end to the draconian rules that their forebearers put in place generations before. However, security force officer Mark Rector and his department have different plans. As alliances form and fall, Governor Jared Pantel sees only one way to bring  Voyager ’s citizens together and secure his own a full-scale colonization effort. Yet, he may have underestimated the passion of those working for the other side... Meanwhile, a harsh alien planet awaits that might have its own ideas about being colonized. A battle for control brews, and victory for one group could mean death for them all. 

My Review:

“Space, the final frontier”…has an awful lot of, well, space, in it. But Star Trek promised that we’d navigate all that space at faster-than-light speed, better known as ‘warp’. Which is probably what FTL will be named if we ever figure out how to do it. Trek history said (says? will say?) that we’ll have it all figured out by 2063 – at least according to Star Trek: First Contact.

But reality is likely otherwise. At least so far as we know now, and seemingly as far as the engineers, designers and builders of the Colony Ship Voyager knew by the time it launched in 2108 – less than a century from our now.

(Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity implies that FTL travel is impossible for anything that has mass. Meaning humans. And spaceships. Even light is implied to be incapable of traveling faster than the speed of light.)

None of the above prevents humans from either wanting or needing to leave Earth and putting down roots – so to speak – among the stars. Even though the nearest planet we know of, at least so far – is Proxima Centauri b, four light-years away. The nearest likely habitable planet, again, that we know of so far, is Kepler-452b and it would take 1,400 years to get there.

Without FTL travel, space is big and vast and even potential ‘Class-M planets’ (again to use Star Trek terminology because Trek named everything) is too far away from Earth for conventional space travel to work.

The two most often used science fictional methods of interplanetary travel for colonization that work – often badly in fiction – with this dilemma are sleeper ships and colony ships. Generation Ship, as one can tell by the title, is a colony ship.

Colony ship stories have all sorts of dramatic possibilities because, while space may be vast and infinite, the world of the colony ship is relatively small and even claustrophobic – especially over a vast, generations-long, journey to a new home.

Also, humans are gonna human, no matter what circumstances they find themselves in.

Which leads us, by a bit of a roundabout, to the Colony Ship Voyager (Trek again!) on its 250 year journey from Earth to Promissa. A planet which may or may not live up to its promise even as it hoves into sight and reach.

While there’s a philosophical cliché that “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey”, in colony ship stories it’s not the journey, it’s the destination where all the dramatic tension comes into play. The journey, at least after the drama of the launch and the early years of settling in for the long haul, is mostly about keeping on keeping on as everyone adjusts to the new normal.

But the destination, or at least the increasing stress as the destination becomes all too real, represents a time of great change, as the life and routine that the ship has settled into is about to be overset by planetfall. Which may or may not be everything everyone hoped and dreamed way back when the first crew set off on their journey.

And will certainly upset the status quo. Life is going to be vastly different after the ship’s crew become planetary settlers. Whoever it is who has knowledge and power aboard ship may or may not have the skills it takes to be a leader on the ground. Which does not mean that the shipboard leaders aren’t going to do their level and even skullduggery best to remain powerful and privileged.

The story of Generation Ship is all about the jockeying and politicking and outright underhanded dealing that goes on as the Voyager’s probes are able to finally reach the ‘promised land’ and the end of the long journey is about to begin.

Unless, of course, Promissa itself has other ideas.

Escape Rating A++: In spite of the relatively small size of the Colony Ship Voyager, the final months of its long journey to Promissa contain a utterly riveting, terrifically complex and downright huge story that isn’t about the science of colony ships a quarter so much as it is about the political shenanigans of the humans aboard them.

It’s a roiling stew of “we have met the enemy and he is us” coming to a full boil in an atmosphere of “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, especially over time and covered by the slowly eroding illusion of “we’re all in this together” mixed with a heaping helping of “the greater good”.

At the center of the drama are a series of first-person perspectives from all over the ship, from the all-powerful but absolutely not all-knowing governor who is desperate to hang onto his power while cementing his legacy, to the over-ambitious security guard who is just so sure he’s smarter than everyone around him, to the reluctant leader of the not-so-loyal opposition to the scientist whose beloved science is telling her that they are not ready to make planetfall – no matter what the governor has manipulated people into believing. While behind the scenes an ace hacker/engineer sees a truth about their ship that no one is ready to believe or understand.

By seeing the situation from so many sides we’re able to get inside the life of the ship, AND the life on the ship, which are not nearly as much the same things as everyone believes. We’re watching a world come apart – even if that’s what was always supposed to happen. And it’s utterly fascinating as the players negotiate and maneuver themselves into a situation that is nothing like the first crew expected.

And it’s absolutely riveting every step of the way, even as it recalls several previous colony ship stories that wrestle with the same issues but take them down to the mat or to the planet in entirely different ways. If Generation Ship sounds fascinating to you, and I sincerely hope it does, you might want to also check out Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji, Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport, Mickey7 by Edward Ashton and, last but absolutely not least, the Pixar film WALL-E.

Review: Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden

Review: Emergent Properties by Aimee OgdenEmergent Properties by Aimee Ogden
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction mystery
Pages: 126
Published by Tordotcom on July 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Emergent Properties is the touching adventure of an intrepid A.I. reporter hot on the heels of brewing corporate warfare from Nebula Award-nominated author Aimee Ogden.
A state-of-the-art AI with a talent for asking questions and finding answers, Scorn is nevertheless a parental disappointment. Defying the expectations of zir human mothers, CEOs of the world’s most powerful corporations, Scorn has made a life of zir own as an investigative reporter, crisscrossing the globe in pursuit of the truth, no matter the danger.
In the middle of investigating a story on the moon, Scorn comes back online to discover ze has no memory of the past ten days—and no idea what story ze was even chasing. Letting it go is not an option—not if ze wants to prove zirself. Scorn must retrace zir steps in a harrowing journey to uncover an even more explosive truth than ze could have ever imagined.

My Review:

When we first meet Scorn, ze is pretty much of a mess. A very determined mess, but a mess all the same. Ze has just lost over ten days of memory – along with ALL of zir backups. As ze is an autonomous AI, that shouldn’t even be possible. But as ze is an investigative reporter doing zir best to make zir mark by breaking a sensational story to get zir high-powered, highly intelligent, mega-corporation-owning mothers off zir back about zir’s career choices, it’s a tragedy in the making.

At the same time, in the best tradition of investigative reporters everywhere and everywhen, it’s also a sign that ze is on the right track to that story. Which means that ze is incapable of letting it go. And as a state-of-the-art AI, Scorn is capable of retracing his steps, both digital and physical, to get back what ze lost.

On the moon, which is where Scorn lost it the first time. Which is also the last place zir mothers want zem to go – considering Scorn’s last trip got zir memory wiped.

Emergent Properties is the story of Scorn’s journey back to where ze nearly lost zirself, dodging EMP pulses and drone attacks every step of the way, along the trail of a story that will either make or break zem.

Or both. Definitely both. In ways that Scorn never, ever expected – even though ze very much should have.

Escape Rating A++: I’ve been pushing this book at anyone willing to stand still for it for months. I read this one for a Library Journal review and fell completely in love, and don’t seem to have fallen out in the intervening months. To the point where a reread just now was like catching up with an old friend.

One of the things I loved about Scorn is that ze is pretty much Murderbot’s ‘brother from another mother’, even though neither identifies as or even has a gender. Which doesn’t change how much their snarkitude is in sync even if pointed in different directions.

Notice I didn’t say anything about either of them not having a mother, because Scorn certainly has two – both of whom are giving zem exactly the same kind of grief that mothers the world over give their newly adult children when those children are not living their parents’ dreams for them.

Mother may not always know best, but she always thinks she does, and Scorn is getting that times two. Which ze does zir best to ignore or delay or postpone dealing with, as so many of us do. At least until this time it bites zem in the ass – in multiple senses of the phrase – even if Scorn doesn’t always have an ass, depending on which carapace ze happens to be using at the present.

While Scorn is very much the character that carries the story, the places ze carries that story through are both fascinating and fantastic every step of the way.

A part of this reader wants to say that Scorn comes across as very human, because that’s our default paradigm. But like Murderbot, Scorn isn’t human and doesn’t want to be – no matter how much zir mothers hoped that ze would aspire to such.

And the whole idea that ze still must deal with zir human mothers and their human disappointment in zem is what makes Scorn so easy for human readers to identify with. Ze has mommy issues – and don’t we all?

But zir world is our future, and it feels plausible even as we get sucked into it. Human greed carried out through corporate political shenanigans is running the show. Independence for human colonies and autonomy for sentient, sapient, autonomous AIs are being spun into opposition instead of banding together to help each other. Because the corporations make more profits out of war than they do peace.

Scorn moves through zir world as an AI, not a fixed body in time and space. Ze uses bodies, but is not attached to or possessed by one, and it changes zir perspective in ways that go even beyond what we’ve already seen in John Scalzi’s Lock In, although there are some similarities. Scorn goes well beyond the ‘threeps’ in what ze does and how ze does it. It feels like a next step.

At the same time, Scorn’s emotional landscape is as fraught and confused as any human’s. Ze just processes it differently some of the time, and turns it off some of the time, but it is still recognizable and well within our empathetic parameters.

So I had an absolute blast reading about Scorn’s surprising Emergent Properties, was fascinated with zir world, and hope the author takes us back to zir and it sometime in the future!

Review: The Stars Undying by Emery Robin

Review: The Stars Undying by Emery RobinThe Stars Undying (Empire Without End, #1) by Emery Robin
Narrator: Esther Wane, Tim Campbell
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Series: Empire Without End #1
Pages: 518
Length: 16 hours and 32 minutes
Published by Orbit on November 8, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

In this spectacular space opera inspired by the lives and loves of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, a princess stripped of her power finds control through an affair that could help regain her reign—perfect for readers of Ann Leckie and Arkady Martine.
Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed not just the crown of their planet Szayet but the Pearl of its prophecy, a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet's god. Stripped of her birthright, Gracia flees the planet—just as Matheus Ceirran, Commander of the interstellar Empire of Ceiao, arrives in deadly pursuit with his volatile lieutenant, Anita. When Gracia and Ceirran's paths collide, Gracia sees an opportunity to win back her planet, her god, and her throne…if she can win the Commander and his right-hand officer over first.
But talking her way into Ceirran’s good graces, and his bed, is only the beginning. Dealing with the most powerful man in the galaxy is almost as dangerous as war, and Gracia is quickly torn between an alliance that fast becomes more than political and the wishes of the god—or machine—that whispers in her ear. For Szayet's sake, and her own, Gracia will need to become more than a princess with a silver tongue. She will have to become a queen as history has never seen before—even if it breaks an empire.

My Review:

The queen. The carpet. The conqueror. It’s an indelible image, even if it was fixed in the collective unconscious by a mistranslation of Plutarch combined with a desire for a salacious story rather than anything that might have happened in history. Several sumptuous movies cemented that image.

So it’s not exactly a surprise that this science fictionalized reimagining of the romance of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, while it doesn’t start with that scene, features it prominently. And makes it every bit as captivating and unforgettable in this story of two towering giants at the center of the rise and fall of an intergalactic empire as it was in the same circumstances of the world-spanning empire.

At first, and on the surface, The Stars Undying reads as a grand romance. And it definitely is that – even if neither of the protagonists begin their relationship thinking that’s where they are heading and what it’s all going to be about.

Altagracia is a disgraced princess leading a rebellion against her twin sister – who has just become the Queen of Szayet and the Oracle of their god, Alekso the Undying. We experience her side of this space opera from her first-person perspective so we begin the story thinking that we’re inside her head – even as she admits that she’s lying both to us and to herself as she sets out to overthrow her sister’s divine rule and take the crown for herself.

Which is where Matheus Cierran, the Commander of all the fleets and armies of the vast Empire of Ceiao, enters the picture. And Gracia enters his quarters rolled into a rug. Gracia conquers the conqueror – not so much with her beauty as with her wit and charisma – and he conquers her sister on her behalf.

As their romance spans the galaxy between Szayet and Ceiao, we see their universe from their alternating, first-person viewpoints, never quite sure who truly conquered whom, who is lying to whom, and whose intentions are the most righteous. While we watch them fall deeper in love with each other, and while both fail to recognize who their true enemies are – and fatally underestimate those enemies and each other.

Cleopatra and Caesar, (1866) painted by Jean-Leon Gerome
Cleopatra and Caesar, painted by
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1866)

Escape Rating A++: Because The Stars Undying is, most definitely, a reimagining of the relationship, both personal and absolutely political, between Cleopatra of Egypt and Julius Caesar, we do go into this story thinking that we know how it ends and even a bit of how it gets there. And just like Friday’s book, The Cleaving, that bit of foreknowledge does not keep the reader from frantically turning pages to see how it gets there.

In addition to the epic romance, and more important than that romance in the long run, The Stars Undying is also the story of the decline and fall of empire. As it begins, as it began, when Cleopatra rolled out of that rug – or more likely rose out of a sack – Rome was at the peak of its power. Just as Ceiao is when Gracia emerges from her carpet at Ceirran’s feet.

The thing about being at the peak of something is that from that highest point there is only one direction to go. Down. So this story is not about the crest of the peak but about the tip over it and into the decline that will inevitably follow – even if the principals can’t see it. Not yet anyway.

So the romance is how we get into this story, but that beginning takes us deeply into what one writer called “the romance of political agency” as we watch Gracia and Cierran jockey for power within their relationship and attempt to maneuver their way through and around the pitfalls of the densely factional political climate of Ceiao. An empire where the backstabbing never seems to end and Ceirran is always the target whether he recognizes it or not.

One of the fascinating things about the way that this story unfolds is just how tightly it gets wrapped around religion. Not any particular religion as we know it today, but religion and its seeming antithesis nevertheless. The Empire of Ceiao was founded on the basis of the disestablishment of ALL religions, which is carried to the point of being a religion unto itself.

Szayet, very much on the other hand, is not just a religiously backed monarchy but their religion is based on the idea that their god, Alekso Undying, lives on in an oracular artifact that is worn by each of his descendants as a symbol of their holiness and his godhood. It’s not even a myth. Gracia wears the Pearl and the spirit of Alekso within it does communicate with her frequently, often and always with disappointment in her and her actions. The only question in both the reader’s mind and Ceirran’s is whether the being she is communicating with is truly Alekso’s soul or merely his mind locked in a sophisticated machine.

That question, and both Ceirran’s and Ceiao’s reaction to any and all possible answers to it, turns out to hold the key both to his downfall and Gracia’s future in a way that surprises the reader and manages to seem inevitable at the same time. But then, all great leaders sow the seeds of their own destruction – at least in fiction.

The story in The Stars Undying reads like an unlikely amalgam of the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough, The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Elizabeth George, Behind the Throne by K.B. Wagers, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine and Engines of Empire by R.S. Ford. As a stew it shouldn’t work but most definitely does, combining the first-person perspective of the Memoirs with the deep dive into Roman history and politics of the McCullough series with the variations of the great empire not able to see or admit that it is past its prime in all three of the space opera series.

It’s not the stew that anyone would have expected but it’s absolutely glorious in its execution and now that I’ve read it I can’t help but wonder why no one got quite all the way here sooner. That the audiobook version that I listened to gave the two central figures, Gracia and Ceirran, their own separate, distinct and extremely well-acted voices was just icing on a very tasty cake.

(I had to switch to text near the end because I couldn’t bear to hear Gracia’s perspective on learning that Ceirran was gone in “her” voice, told from her internal, intimate, point of view. It would have been just too painful.)

That ending was so inevitable, based on the source material, that saying it happened does not feel like a spoiler. Howsomever, speaking of that source material, it is equally clear that the ending of The Stars Undying cannot possibly be the ending of the entire saga. This book, unbelievably the author’s debut novel, is listed as the first book in the Empire Without End duology. The second book in the duology is tentatively titled The Sea Unbounded and I can’t wait to read it whenever it appears. I might, maybe, possibly, have gotten over the book hangover from this book by then!

Review: Signal Moon by Kate Quinn + Giveaway

Review: Signal Moon by Kate Quinn + GiveawaySignal Moon: A Short Story by Kate Quinn
Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld, Andrew Gibson
Format: audiobook
Source: publisher
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, timeslip fiction, World War II
Pages: 57
Length: 1 hour and 22 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories, Audible Audio on August 1, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye comes a riveting short story about an impossible connection across two centuries that could make the difference between peace or war.

Yorkshire, 1943. Lily Baines, a bright young debutante increasingly ground down by an endless war, has traded in her white gloves for a set of headphones. It’s her job to intercept enemy naval communications and send them to Bletchley Park for decryption.

One night, she picks up a transmission that isn’t code at all—it’s a cry for help.

An American ship is taking heavy fire in the North Atlantic—but no one else has reported an attack, and the information relayed by the young US officer, Matt Jackson, seems all wrong. The contact that Lily has made on the other end of the radio channel says it’s…2023.

Across an eighty-year gap, Lily and Matt must find a way to help each other: Matt to convince her that the war she’s fighting can still be won, and Lily to help him stave off the war to come. As their connection grows stronger, they both know there’s no telling when time will run out on their inexplicable link.

My Review:

This story was so beautiful it just about broke me. It was gorgeous and glorious and heartbreaking all at the same time, and I was in tears at the end.

I want to say this is a timeslip story but that isn’t quite right. It’s more of a time-merging story, or a bit of technological SF sleight of hand story. It’s best to just say that it works. It all works marvelously, and let the how and why of it remain a bit nebulous.

After all, our two principals don’t completely understand the why of it themselves. They just know that it happened. And that it saved them both.

Lily Baines is a signal tech in Yorkshire in 1943, spending her days and nights with a Bakelite headset wrapped around her “bat-like” ears, listening for German signals. She’s a Petty Officer in the WRENS (Women’s Royal Naval Service), doing her bit for in a war that she’s entirely too afraid is being lost.

Late one shift, she picks up a signal from an American ship, broadcast in English, in the “clear”, detailing an attack on the ship by “Vampires”. An attack that results in the ship sinking with all hands after 42 minutes of harrowing transmission by the U.S. Naval signal tech, ST Matt Jackson, who gives the date as 2023.

While her superiors are certain that Lily has just been working too many days in a row without a break, Lily feels like she owes it to her fellow signal tech, the man she just heard narrate his own death, to try to help him. So she sends him a letter, a 1943-era radio, extra batteries, and a list of frequencies that she promises to listen on at a specific time every day.

There’s no science fiction involved in her package to the future. Her uncle is a solicitor and she contracts with his office to deliver the package to a certain room in a certain hotel in York on the day Matt said he checked in. Law offices do this all the time, just not necessarily for quite 80 years.

When Matt gets the radio, he’s sure it’s a prank, but he dials the frequency anyway. Even when Lily starts talking, he STILL thinks it’s a prank – at least until that night, when an event that she predicted comes true.

They have less than 24 hours to analyze the transmission that Matt hasn’t sent yet, in the hopes of figuring out what is about to go wrong so that he can prevent it. Or save his ship. Whatever it takes to prevent yet another war.

What they get is more than either of them ever bargained for. It’s enough – and it’s not nearly enough at all.

Escape Rating A++: Signal Moon is short and absolutely perfect in its length. It represents a very brief moment in time and needed to reflect that brevity. Also, it’s just so damn bittersweet – and appropriate in that bitter sweetness, that more would be just too much to take.

It’s that good.

But because of that short length, I was able to sit down with the audiobook and finish in one utterly absorbing and in the end completely heartbreaking listen. (If you have Amazon Prime you can get both the ebook and the audio as part of your Prime membership, and it’s so worth it to listen to the audio if you have a mere 82 minutes to occupy your hands while your mind wanders back to 1943 – and forward to OMG next year.)

The strength of this story is in the characters. The author sketches us a complete picture of Lily and her wartime service with just a bit of description and a whole lot of Lily’s internal monologue as she goes through her day pretending that everything is going to be alright even though she’s scared right down to her not-nearly-warm-enough fingertips that all is already lost.

While Matt’s more frank and frequently profane dialog, along with the desperation of his own internal monologue, gives the reader or listener a clear portrait of who he is and what drove him to become the person – and the officer – that he is on the brink of what could be – briefly – his very own war.

In the audiobook, the two characters are brilliantly voiced by their own narrators, Saskia Maarleveld for Lily and Andrew Gibson for Matt and they embody their characters beautifully. The audio would not have worked half so well with a single narrator. (Saskia Maarleveld is also the narrator for several of the author’s novels, including this year’s The Diamond Eye, which just moved up the towering TBR pile as a result.)

The ending of this story is inevitable. There’s just no other way this one works. But it’s easy to get so involved in their story that you just want it to have a different ending anyway. And that’s what broke me in the end. I knew what the end would be, but this was just one of those times where I really wanted a deus ex machina to step in and make that difference happen – even knowing how much I usually hate those kinds of endings. But it wasn’t, and it shouldn’t have been, meant to be.

Dammit.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Kate Quinn and Amazon Publishing are giving away a $50 Amazon Gift Card to one very lucky entrant on this tour!
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Review: Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee

Review: Jade Legacy by Fonda LeeJade Legacy (The Green Bone Saga, #3) by Fonda Lee
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Green Bone Saga #3
Pages: 713
Published by Orbit on November 30, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Jade, the mysterious and magical substance once exclusive to the Green Bone warriors of Kekon, is now known and coveted throughout the world. Everyone wants access to the supernatural abilities it provides, from traditional forces such as governments, mercenaries, and criminal kingpins, to modern players, including doctors, athletes, and movie studios. As the struggle over the control of jade grows ever larger and more deadly, the Kaul family, and the ancient ways of the Kekonese Green Bones, will never be the same.
The Kauls have been battered by war and tragedy. They are plagued by resentments and old wounds as their adversaries are on the ascent and their country is riven by dangerous factions and foreign interference that could destroy the Green Bone way of life altogether. As a new generation arises, the clan’s growing empire is in danger of coming apart.
The clan must discern allies from enemies, set aside aside bloody rivalries, and make terrible sacrifices… but even the unbreakable bonds of blood and loyalty may not be enough to ensure the survival of the Green Bone clans and the nation they are sworn to protect.

My Review:

As the final book in the epic – but not necessarily epic fantasy – Green Bone Saga, the story here deals with resolving the past and turning towards the future. In other words, the legacy of the two rival Green Bone clans in Kekon; The Mountain and No Peak.

A legacy that both clans continue jockeying over and for every step of the way – until the bitter end of not one but two old tigers that we’ve watched fight for control through three marvelous books.

The story that began in Jade City centered on the hot war for the city of Janloon between the Mountain clan led by the master strategist Ayt Madashi and the Mountain’s former allies turned bitter enemies, the No Peak clan founded by the Kaul family and led in its current generation by the wartime chief, or Pillar as they are termed in Asian-inspired Kekon, Kaul Hilo with his sister Kaul Shae at his side as the business leader or Weather Man of the clan.

That Ayt Mada is the first female Pillar, while Kaul Shae is the first female Weather Man is part of the long struggle between the clans.

That hot war switches to a cold war in Jade War, as the two clans have become so large and control so much of their country that neither can manage to swallow the other. Instead they fight through foreign subsidiaries, mercenaries, and proxies.

By the time that Jade Legacy begins, that cold war has turned into a “slow war” with the Ayt and Kaul families on opposite sides of both local and international conflicts. They cooperate in small ways while backing up their international proxies with money, jade, and in the case of the Mountain, the drugs that allow non-Kekonese to master the Jade disciplines. The larger countries, the Republic of Espenia and Ygutan, believe that the Ayts and the Kauls are tributaries in their wars, when from the Kekonese and clan perspectives, both clans of Green Bones are using their allies instead.

The story of Jade Legacy takes place over a span of 20+ years, as Kaul Hilo and Ayt Mada mature and even begin to grow old as both adversaries and jade warriors. As the saying goes, “Jade warriors are young, and then they are ancient.” When the story began in Jade City, they were young, barely into adulthood, newly and unexpectedly the Pillars of their respective clans, still under the long shadow cast by their predecessors, the Spear and Torch of Kekon who threw out an attempted colonization by powers who thought they could not be defeated by barbarian savages.

Jade War is the story of both in their prime, while Jade Legacy is about the long, slow progression of Kekon in their wider world, and of the transition from their generation to the next as we see Hilo’s children and the children of his family and friends grow to take their places in the clan.

It’s an epic, uplifting and heartbreaking by turns. It’s a sprawling family saga, in the same way that The Godfather was a family saga. A story about multiple generations of a family, of people who do some very bad things for what they perceive or believe are good reasons. People who are often thought of as criminals by outsiders, and whom we feel for anyway. Deeply.

Escape Rating A++: This book, and this entire series, deserve all the stars. I picked this to be the last review of the year because I wanted to finish this year’s reading with a real bang of a winner, and Jade Legacy delivered all the highs and lows I could possibly have ever wanted.

I started with the audio on this, which was ,as usual, excellent. But I read a lot faster than I listen, and I desperately needed to know how this one ended so I finished in one epic, 5-hour reading binge. I still have the epic book hangover to go with that long binge followed by that bang of an ending.

As I look back on the whole thing, the Green Bone Saga feels like it’s Shae’s story. At the beginning, she’s on her way home from exile in Espenia to pay her respects to her dying grandfather, the old hero once known as the Torch of Kekon. In the wake of his passing, Kekon explodes, eventually leaving Shae as the first female Weather Man of her clan to her brother Hilo’s Pillar.

Shae is at the center of the whole saga. Hilo and Ayt Mada may grab all the attention in the foreground of the story as much of the action centers on the more active aspects of their feud, but Shae is always in the room where it happens – and is the cause of much of it happening. And in the end, Shae is the last one of her generation still standing. Even the formidable Ayt Mada has been brought low. Only Shae is left to tell their story. And I grieved with her at the ending of it all.

It began as a story about what happens to a family and a society after the revolution has been won. How do you keep the ideals alive in the second and third generations as the memory fades and the wider world seduces with new temptations and new shortcuts?

It ends as a story about moving forward into the future by setting aside the old grievances without leaving behind the old virtues.

Ultimately, the contest between the Mountain and No Peak was a war of differing perspectives on how to accomplish that feat. And the difference between them came down, not to a specific strategy or even a specific individual, but rather a contest between a leader who relied only on herself and accepted no vision and trusted no word other than her own – and a leader who was not afraid to gather the best and the brightest around himself, listen to them even when they disagreed with him, and let them do their damn jobs. One person’s vision of “the greater good” vs. the squabbling but ultimately unified vision of an entire family.

Watching them rise, and fall, and rise again is a journey very worth taking. If you have not yet had the pleasure, start with Jade City and be prepared for a wild, satisfying and heartbreaking ride. I envy you the journey.

Although the story of the Kaul family and the No Peak clan has come to a fittingly bittersweet ending, there is still one brief visit to Janloon to look forward to. The Jade Setter of Janloon, a prequel novella for the trilogy, will be out in the spring of 2022. And I’m glad because I’m not at all ready to let this family and this world go.

Review: The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

Review: The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher BuehlmanThe Blacktongue Thief (Blacktongue, #1) by Christopher Buehlman
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, grimdark, sword and sorcery
Series: Blacktongue #1
Pages: 416
Published by Tor Books on May 25, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a thief, which includes (but is not limited to) lock-picking, knife-fighting, wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, trap-making, plus a few small magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest road, planning to rob the next traveler that crosses his path.
But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.
Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant northern city fell to giants.
Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds his fate entangled with Galva's. Common enemies and uncommon dangers force thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh, krakens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford.

My Review:

I just finished The Blacktongue Thief a couple of hours ago, and my first coherent thought was simply “WOW!” followed by a long string of “Wow”s and gibbering into squeeing incoherence after that.

Also leaving me with an epic book hangover that may not fade for days as my thoughts tumble over one another – and me without a Catfall ring to keep them from breaking when they all hit the ground.

A Catfall ring, like the one that Kinch Na Shannack pockets on his way through this story. Is a thief’s tool. A ring that has the right kind of magic to help him fall like a cat and land more-or-less unharmed if he has to fall from too great a height. Which he probably will, because Kinch is a thief.

A member in rather bad standing of the Takers’ Guild, as the thieves’ guild is known in his extremely messed up world.

Not just Kinch’s own situation, but the world itself is so FUBAR’d that I found myself thinking that this was really a kind of post-apocalyptic story. It’s just that Kinch’s world isn’t our world so their apocalypse doesn’t look like our apocalypse would look.

But it feels like a story about what happens after the end of the world all the same.

Kinch is a thief who has been set on the trail of a mercenary warrior in order to pay off some of his debt to his guild. The Takers Guild is clearly a racket and a con job from start to finish, and it’s equally clear that the very first people it steals from are its own members.

Not that it doesn’t steal from pretty much everyone else, everywhere, all the time. If there is one thing the Takers Guild is very talented at, it’s taking. After all, it’s in the name.

Kinch, at first, doesn’t know why he’s been set to get into the good graces, such as they are, of the Espanthian warrior Galva. He has no idea that his mission is going to turn into a quest that will shake the foundation of empires and change his worldview forever.

Nor that it will break his heart.

Escape Rating A++: At first, before we – or Kinch – really understand the stakes of his journey, it seems as if The Blacktongue Thief is going to be epic fantasy by way of sword and sorcery. And there is a lens through which the early parts of Kinch’s tale read like the best of that old school of magic and swashbuckling. Kinch is just the type of antihero who narrates the many of those old stories, and he’s following a warrior on a mad quest with the help of not a little magic and not a few mages.

Howsomever, in spite of the self-deprecating humor that Kinch can’t resist, his extremely jaundiced view of his world, his place in it and his utter inability not to make a terrible joke or snark about his surroundings and the people in them, this isn’t quite sword and sorcery after all.

Instead, as a friend pointed out in his own review, The Blacktongue Thief might be better described as “maturesmirk”, where the grimness of the world and much of the action in it reflects grimdark fantasy like Game of Thrones while viewing it through a scrim of snarktastic gallows humor rather than just looking at it through the opening of a noose.

(Be advised that a Google search for the term “maturesmirk” will bring up a surprising amount of “adult material” along with the books. Kinch would approve.)

The story is told by Kinch himself, clearly as a memoir narrated at a much later point. So about the only thing we know is that he survived. Everyone else – well, we’ll find out eventually. Probably. Hopefully.

But it’s both being inside Kinch’s head and experiencing his memory while also hearing his thoughts and asides and attempts to distract himself and commentary and it seems like every glimmer of an idea or a joke that flies around inside his head. If you like stories told in snarkcasm, hearing both the things the character says and all the things he does his best to keep behind his teeth, this one is awesome.

Speaking of being inside Kinch’s head, The Blacktongue Thief is the first time I picked up an “Advance Listening Copy” from NetGalley instead of just waiting to buy the audio on Audible after it came out. Going in, I had a certain amount of trepidation about the author reading his own work. When it works, as it does for Mary Robinette Kowal and Neil Gaiman, it really, really works. But when it doesn’t work, it can be pretty awful.

This, however, worked so well I felt like I was listening to Kinch rather than to the author. Which turns out to be not really surprising, as the author performs regularly at Renaissance Faires as ‘Christophe the Insultor’. It may be that there’s a lot of ‘Christophe’ in Kinch, or a lot of Kinch in ‘Christophe’, or just a lot of the author’s voice in both.

Listening to, for all intents and purposes Kinch telling his own story just made the whole book that much better. I did read the last couple of chapters in ebook because I just ran out of patience and time.

This is not a story that is good for heroes, to paraphrase Varric Tethras, but it is a story that is chock full of them. Not the kind of heroes that lead great armies into mighty battles against the nearly overwhelming forces of evil, but rather people who get the job that has to be done, done, by getting into the muck and the mire and coming out swinging.

It’s also a story where the forces of evil, such as they are, are not led by monstrous beings of great monstrousness, but rather this is a story about the evil that men and women – and people of all races and species – do to each other in order to get one up on everyone else.

These are characters to fall in love with, to cry over and to cheer for, frequently all at the same time. I can’t wait to travel with them again.

One last thing, because I just can’t stop. There’s a point in the story, a little past the half, where Kinch gives the most beautiful, most poignant, most bittersweet invocation to his lover’s memory that it brought tears to my eyes. It is so clear that he loved her, and so sad that it makes it obvious that whatever happened along their journey – which we don’t even know yet – their romance did not come to a happy ending – but come to an ending it certainly did. And from whatever point in his life that Kinch is at when he writes this memoir, he still mourns her.

It’s love, it’s poetry, it’s just beautiful words said absolutely perfectly. And it made me cry. Maybe it will make you cry too.

Review: A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark

Review: A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli ClarkA Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, steampunk, urban fantasy
Series: Dead Djinn Universe #1
Pages: 400
Published by Tordotcom on May 11, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns to his popular alternate Cairo universe for his fantasy novel debut, A Master of Djinn
Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer.
So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 50 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.
Alongside her Ministry colleagues and her clever girlfriend Siti, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city - or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems....

My Review:

From a certain perspective, A Master of Djinn is urban fantasy of the old alternate history school of urban fantasy. Urban fantasy so often revolves around one of two premises, either that magic has always been here, and most of us just haven’t noticed – or the other side of that coin, that once upon a time there was magic that either slowly or quickly left, but that something or someone has made the magic return. Usually with world shaking or world shattering results.

A Master of Djinn is definitely one of those stories where the magic has returned. But it isn’t a story about what happens when that magic returned. Instead, and more interestingly, this is a story that takes place about 50 years later, when the magic has more or less become part of the new fabric of the world and history has adapted around it – whether people have or not.

This story takes place in Cairo – Egypt and definitely not Illinois (a tip of the hat to American Gods which is surprisingly apropos in the end) – in an alternate 1912. The re-introduction of magic has changed the world in a whole lot of ways while at the same time the great forces of history that brought about World War I in our history are still very much in train. A train that might still be forced off the metaphorical rails – but might not. And will certainly cause worldwide destruction either way.

At the same time, also very much a part of urban fantasy, there’s a mystery to solve. And someone to solve it, in this case Agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. Fatma is one of the few women in an agency that is still mostly male dominated, and a native Egyptian in a world where Egypt has thrown off the yoke of British colonial power – no matter how reluctant the British are to accept that the Raj is dying and that the new world order looks like it will push the countries with old magic – the countries they once colonized – into the forefront.

The case that Fatma has to solve very much intertwines the new world and the old. From the very outset, it seems like it’s a crime of magic. And so it is. But like all the best of urban fantasy, which A Master of Djinn very much is, magic may be the modus operandi but it is not the reason behind any or all of the crimes involved.

Someone in Cairo wants to become the master of all the djinn that have become part of the city’s rise to power, and part of the brave new world that they brought with them. And they don’t care how much of the city – or the world – they have to destroy in order to get their way.

After all, the aphorism about power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely, is entirely, completely and utterly about humans. Especially the human at the heart of this case.

Escape Rating A++: Honestly, I want to just sit here and squee. A lot. This was amazingly awesome from beginning to end and I don’t say that lightly. This is one of those stories that made me think pretty much all the thoughts and I’m still reeling a bit from the absolutely epic book hangover.

I also think the 400 page count is a bit of an underestimate. This is a lot of book, in scope, in depth and in size. If It sounds interesting but you’re wondering whether you will like it or not, there are three very short reads set in the same universe but not direct prequels to this story. So if this universe sounds like fun, The Angel of Khan el-Khalili is only 32 pages and is available free at Tor.com,  A Dead Djinn in Cairo is only 45 pages and The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is 116 pages. Long enough to give you a taste without devoting the weekend that A Master of Djinn really, really consumes.

And I’m telling you that because I loved this book and just want to shove it at people to read. I’m not above using ANY of the short works in this universe as a gateway drug in order to accomplish that.

Speaking of gateway drugs, two books that A Master of Djinn reminded me of A LOT are Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone and Snake Agent by Liz Williams. In combination, they represent two of the elements of the Dead Djinn Universe, that mix of the cities powered by magic and worlds where the divine and the supernatural walk among humans as ordinary citizens. Three Parts Dead has a similar steampunk “feel” as A Master of Djinn while Snake Agent is also urban fantasy in that the continuing character is a government agent who solves crimes involving the supernatural and the other-than or more-than human.

One more digression, probably not the last. The way that the world has been pushed onto a new axis has endless possibilities and not just in Agent Fatma’s Cairo. This is a world where the colonizers have all been pushed hard off their thrones and dominions because they either don’t have old magic in their history and/or have deliberately pushed aside and suppressed old magic in the places they thought they “conquered”. It’s not all djinn. We already know it’s not djinn in Germany because we meet Kaiser Wilhelm and his goblin advisor. It’s not going to be djinn in the Americas, either. But whoever and whatever comes back wherever, the colonizers are already the ones finding themselves ground under someone else’s bootheel – and they don’t like it and are going to fight back. All of which has the potential to be totally epic.

But those are stories for another day. Today we have Agent Fatma, her Cairo, and the would-be master of the djinn. Who don’t want a master at all – thankyouverymuch.

The story is mostly told from Fatma’s perspective, although not in the first-person. It’s more that she’s the character we follow rather than seeing the story from inside her head. Still, I think the reader needs to like her and feel for her as she does her best to work the case that has the powers-that-be so upset. As I most definitely did.

She’s caught between frustrations and multiple nexus (nexi?) of power. She’s a woman in what is still a man’s world, constantly needing to prove herself by being better than the best. At which she mostly succeeds.

At the same time, she’s part of a world that is, in its entirety, in the midst of change. Not just the change that women are slowly but steadily invading what were formerly all-male preserves, but also a world where the political status quo has turned upside down. While the political and economic power in Egypt and elsewhere around the world has been taken out of the hands of the British and other colonizers and returned to the citizens and residents – and their own elected or hereditary leadership – who are part of the once-colonies – there is still plenty of residual feeling, both reverence and resentment – for individuals who used to be part of the colonial power structure.

And money always talks. The rich are still different from you and me, as that saying goes. The wealthy, in any time and place and of any origin, are able to buy their own version of justice.

We follow Fatma as she navigates those waters, balancing her need to investigate the case, her necessity of not pissing off her bosses and getting herself demoted or fired, her desire to protect her city and those she loves, and the absolute necessity of exposing a criminal who is trying not just to reach the sky and touch the sun, but to bring it down to earth and make it work at her command.

Fatma will need all of her wits and all of her friends in both high and low places in order to bring justice and save not just her city but her world from utter destruction. As we follow her on her quest, we learn exactly why she’s the right woman – and the right agent – for the job.

I sincerely hope we get to read more of her adventures, because she’s awesome and so is her story.

Review: Behind the Throne by K.B. Wagers

Review: Behind the Throne by K.B. WagersBehind the Throne (The Indranan War #1) by K.B. Wagers
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Series: Indranan War #1
Pages: 413
Published by Orbit on August 2, 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Meet Hail: Captain. Gunrunner. Fugitive.
Quick, sarcastic, and lethal, Hailimi Bristol doesn't suffer fools gladly. She has made a name for herself in the galaxy for everything except what she was born to do: rule the Indranan Empire. That is, until two Trackers drag her back to her home planet to take her rightful place as the only remaining heir.
But trading her ship for a palace has more dangers than Hail could have anticipated. Caught in a web of plots and assassination attempts, Hail can't do the one thing she did twenty years ago: run away. She'll have to figure out who murdered her sisters if she wants to survive.
A gun smuggler inherits the throne in this Star Wars-style science fiction adventure from debut author K. B. Wagers. Full of action-packed space opera exploits and courtly conspiracy - not to mention an all-out galactic war - Behind the Throne will please fans of James S. A Corey, Becky Chambers and Lois McMaster Bujold, or anyone who wonders what would happen if a rogue like Han Solo were handed the keys to an empire . . .

My Review:

The blurb talks about Star Wars, implies that Hail Bristol is someone like Han Solo who has just found themselves at the head of an empire. But that isn’t strictly true and sets up a whole lot of assumptions about who Hail Bristol is and what she might do as empress. It also sets up some false expectation of just how much running and gunning there will be in this space opera.

But that reference to Lois McMaster Bujold hits the nail a LOT closer to the head, particularly as regards Bujold’s definition of science fiction as the “romance of political agency” because this first book in the Indranan War trilogy is ALL up in the politics of the Indranan Empire in a very big way.

Even if it’s the absolute last place that Hail Bristol EVER wanted to be again.

If this series, at least as far as this book goes, has a Star Wars analogy in it, the resemblance sits much more firmly on Princess Leia’s braided crown. If Leia ran away from her responsibilities as Princess, Senator and leader of the Rebel Alliance to take up with Han Solo and live the life he’s been leading as a mercenary and gunrunner for twenty years, the person she’d be at the end of those decades would be someone like Hail.

Because, as Hail discovers the deeper she gets stuck back into Imperial politics, you can take the girl out of the palace intrigue but you can’t take the talent for palace intrigue out of the girl, not even after twenty years of becoming the woman she has become, a gunrunner, a mercenary, and most definitely when the job calls for it, a killer.

And that’s just who and what the Indranan Empire needs when Hail is dragged back to the palace to take up her rightful but resented place as Princess Hailimi Mercedes Jaya Bristol, the last remaining heir of the Empress of Indrana.

Hail’s sisters and her niece are all dead. “Gone to temple” as they say in Indrana. Her mother is dying, poisoned by a slow-acting drug that is about to reach its endpoint – and hers.. It’s going to be up to Hail to find out who eliminated her family – and who is now gunning (and knifing, and bombing) for her.

It’s going to take a killer to catch all the killers – before it’s too late. For Hail – and for Indrana.

Escape Rating A++: I picked up Behind the Throne because I absolutely adored the author’s A Pale Light in the Black, which is also space opera and also the first book in its series. I loved the writing, the world building, and the way that the characters are drawn, and I just wanted more and wanted a story that I would be sucked right into and wouldn’t want to leave. I started this in audio and fell in love with it, but audio was just not going fast enough so I switched to the ebook fairly early on. I did listen long enough that every time Hail says “Bugger me,” which she does often, with good reason and plenty of emphasis, I hear the voice of the audiobook narrator – who was excellent.

This story isn’t the action-oriented adventure that the blurb makes it out to be. It was published in 2016, so that is certainly known and I wasn’t expecting it to be. I was expecting it to be like A Pale Light in the Black, and it definitely is that.

The characters are well-drawn. They feel like real people – admittedly real people in a very unreal situation. Hail has made a life for herself, a life that she’s good at. She doesn’t want to go back for reasons that become obvious early on and are not the result of the current crisis. She didn’t want the life that she’d have been required to lead if she stayed – so she went. Coming back to pick up the pieces of that life is hard and painful and makes her do and think and feel realistic things. She feels inadequate, she feels guilty, she sees herself stepping back into old patterns, she’s lost, she’s confused – and she’s driven. All at the same time.

This is also a story about trust. Trust in yourself, and trust in others. Hail returns to the palace knowing that the only people she trusts are either missing or dead. And that the life she thought she’d built for herself was based on not just one lie, but on a whole damn pack of lies, so she’s lost trust in herself as well.

But she has to find people she can trust, if not absolutely then at least trust enough, to help her wade through the morass and save herself and her empire. And that exercise, of figuring out who is on which side and why and how and whether it’s enough, is a big part of this story.

Because, just like the protagonist of A Pale Light in the Black, Hail is building a team that will see her through. If she trusts them enough. If they trust her enough. And if they are all absolutely excellent at their very difficult jobs.

In the end, in spite of how different their origin stories are, the character that Hail reminds me of the most is Emperox Grayland II in The Collapsing Empire and the rest of Scalzi’s Interdependency series. Although the crises they face are very different, Grayland and Hail come at them from the same direction. They are both outsiders to their respective Imperial systems and Imperial politics, stuck in positions they didn’t want but must defend at every single turn.

Even though they are both extremely unconventional for the positions they hold, their very unconventionality makes them not just the only people by inheritance for those positions at the time they are forced to take them, but the only people by talent, skill and capacity to pull the nuts of their respective empires out of the fires that they have inherited along with their thrones.

So if space opera is your jam, or if you love stories with terrific SFnal worldbuilding and absolute craptons of political skullduggery, Behind the Throne is a winner on every level along with its gunrunner empress Hail Bristol.

I’m already buckled up for Hail’s next adventure/imperial catastrophe in After the Crown, because this ride isn’t over yet and that is the most excellent thing ever!