Genre: epic fantasy

Review: Jade Shards by Fonda Lee

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Jade Shards by Fonda LeeJade Shards (Green Bone Saga #0.75) by Fonda Lee
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Green Bone Saga #0.75
Pages: 136
Published by Subterranean Press on July 31, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Fonda Lee returns to the acclaimed Green Bone Saga with four prequel short stories that delve into the personal histories of the Kaul and Ayt families.
The Witch and Her Friend. Before she was the ruthless leader of the Mountain clan, Ayt Mada was an orphan without friends at school except for one: Aun Ure, a teenage girl feared and renowned as an assassin but yearning for a simpler life.
Not Only Blood. Before he was the heir apparent of the No Peak clan, Kaul Lan challenged his grandfather and clan patriarch to help a boy who had lost everything.
Better Than Jade. Before they were married, Kaul Hilo and Maik Wen were a young couple facing long odds: the son of a top Green Bone clan in love with a stone-eye girl from a disreputable family.
Granddaughter Cormorant. Before she left and returned to Kekon, Kaul Shae was the apple of her grandfather’s eye…as well as a daring secret informer to a foreign country.
Contains an introduction and story notes by the author.

My Review:

Jade Shards isn’t a single story in the world of the Green Bone Saga, rather, just as the title indicates, it’s a series of little stories, shards if you will, of the magically beautiful big green stone that is the entire epic saga that begins with Jade City.

The stories in this collection feature the defining characters of Jade City, Jade War and Jade Legacy, but they are ‘before they were famous’ kinds of stories. In The Witch and Her Friend, we get to meet the towering figure of Ayt Mada on the very first steps of her journey to become the woman who set herself and her entire clan against the Kaul family.

Back when she was not a towering figure – and at that point in Kekon history had no hopes of becoming one. She was young, she was female, she was of unknown origin and she had been adopted into one of the two great families of Kekon. She was expected to be an asset to her new clan, but on the business side. She was never supposed to be the Pillar. WOMEN were not supposed to become Pillars. Period. But here we see the first inkling of the woman who did it anyway.

Ayt Mada was the powerful antagonist of the entire saga, but in that saga, she stood alone as her story does in this collection. The other stories dive deeply into the Kaul family, just as the other three stories here give us a peek into the early days of the three members of the Kaul family who drive the Green Bone Saga, Kaul Lan, Kaul Hilo and Kaul Shae.

All three were the heirs of Kaul Sennington, one of the two great heroes of Kekon’s liberation, along with Ayt Mada’s adopted father Ayt Yugontin. But where Ayt Mada was always alone, and had to fight to become the Pillar, Kaul Lan was always the intended heir of the Kauls.

Their three stories, Not Only Blood, Better Than Jade and Granddaughter Cormorant bring us perspectives on their characters before they became leaders. It’s a view of Lan as he is growing into the person he should have become, Hilo as he takes the first steps on the road to who he will be, and Shae as she attempts to fly away from her destiny.

Everyone who was enthralled by Janloon and fell in love with the characters that truly do live in the pages of the Green Bone Saga will be thrilled to get this glimpse into their earlier lives. And on this last trip back to Kekon will be caught between the pillars of smiling because it happened, and weeping because it’s over.

Escape Rating A+: I’m giving this one an A+ because that’s how deeply I escaped back into the world of the Green Bone Saga, how much I loved going there one more time, and just how damn sad I am that this looks like the last time based on the author’s introduction and notes in the book.

Unlike the first prequel to the Green Bone Saga, The Jade Setter of Janloon, even though all the stories in Jade Shards take place before the opening of Jade City, this is not the kind of prequel that stands alone, nor can it serve as an entry point for Jade City in the way that The Jade Setter of Janloon could.

The story shards in Jade Shards require prior knowledge of both the characters and the setting to have the resonance necessary to make them work. In other words, you have to already care about these people to want to read how they got to be the towering figures they eventually become.

It’s not nearly as interesting to watch their early fumbles and stumbles if you don’t already know just how sure and certain they eventually became on the roads they had to, or chose to, walk. But if you do care, if you’ve already visited Janloon, then Jade Shards is a bittersweet delight from beginning to end.

I finished the Green Bone Saga in tears at the end of Jade Legacy. By the end I felt like I’d walked the road with these marvelous characters and was beyond sad to their story end. It was a right, proper and fitting ending, but I just wasn’t ready to leave this world behind.

And neither was the author, as she admits in the notes for Jade Shards that these stories are a case of her writing fanfiction in the universe that she created. IMHO it’s a universe that is made even richer by these portraits of the clan leaders as young men and women. So I’m glad she was able to put these out into the world and sad that it looks like these will be the last.

The Green Bone Saga gave me the biggest book hangover I can remember in a very long time, one that is still stuck in my brain now two years after I finished Jade Legacy. To the point where I’m highly tempted to start listening to the damn thing all over again.

If you’re still a bit stuck in Janloon and looking for a way to alleviate the ache of missing it, may I recommend Ebony Gate by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle. It’s the first thing that has scratched even the tiniest bit of my itch to return to Kekon. If you have that same itch, it might do the same for you.

And if you don’t have that itch and you’ve read this review to the end, what are you waiting for? Take your very own trip to Jade City and prepare to be captured and captivated.

Review: The Book of Gems by Fran Wilde

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Book of Gems by Fran WildeThe Book of Gems (Gemworld, #3) by Fran Wilde
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Gem Universe #3
Pages: 142
Published by Tordotcom on June 20, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“A glittering tale of academic jealousy and ancient artifacts, The Book of Gems is a pulse-pounding adventure.” ―Katherine Addison, author of The Goblin Emperor
Some truths are shatterproof...
It’s been centuries since the Jeweled Valley and its magical gems were destroyed. In the republics that rose from its ashes, scientists craft synthetic jewels to heat homes, power gadgetry, and wage war.
Dr. Devina Brunai is one of these scientists. She also is the only person who believes true gems still exist. The recent unearthing of the Palace of Gems gives her the perfect opportunity to find them and prove her naysayers wrong.
Her chance is snatched away at the last moment when her mentor steals her research and wins the trip for himself. Soon, his messages from the field transform into bizarre ramblings about a book, a Prince, and an enemy borne of the dark. Now Dev must enter the Valley, find her mentor, and save her research before they, like gems, become relics of a time long forgotten.
More books in the Gem The Jewel and Her LapidaryThe Fire Opal Mechanism

My Review:

The Book of Gems is the third book in the Gem Universe, after The Jewel and Her Lapidary and The Fire Opal Mechanism. This entry in the series brings the action back to the place and the history where it all began, the Jeweled Valley.

In that first book, the titular characters, Jewel Lin and her Lapidary Sima, sacrifice themselves in their attempt to save the Jeweled Valley. While their attempt is not exactly in vain, it is a bit of a pyrrhic victory. They destroy what they love in order to save it from, literally, the ravening hordes who intend not merely to destroy it, but to use its power on their way to saving the world by destroying that.

The Fire Opal Mechanism is the story in the middle, as the history of this world has gone on its not so merry way, down the path that Lin and Sima tried to prevent. Or at least did their level best to keep the power of the singing gems from powering the destruction of the world.

They didn’t exactly fail, but they certainly didn’t succeed, either. In this second book it’s up to their descendants to divert the tide – or at least to set their less than powerful selves against the onrushing storm.

Now the story has both come full circle and done a strange turn into Motel of the Mysteries, but one not nearly as much fun. Because that tyranny has come and finally gone, leaving in its wake a dearth of true historical documentation and a whole lot of scholarly inquiry about things that perhaps shouldn’t be inquired into. Resulting in seemingly innumerable academic and archaeological expeditions to the Jeweled Valley to dig up things that should remain buried, even as the academics seem to be doing their worst to bury each other’s careers if not, actually, each other.

In the midst of this furious excavation, the Jeweled Valley is being slowly but surely uncovered, as it waits a bit impatiently for Lin and Sima’s descendants to save it one more time. Or at least to save their world from the force that has been waiting within. Or both. Definitely both.

Escape Rating A-: I originally picked up The Jewel and Her Lapidary because I was looking for a short bite of the SF/F reading apple and Tordotcom always delivers. I stuck with the series because that first book was just so damn good, such a perfect epic fantasy in an amazingly succinct little package, that I couldn’t resist seeing what happened after Jewel’s rather cataclysmic ending. Not that it didn’t have a slam-bang, bittersweet ending for itself, but the world clearly had plenty more stories to tell.

The second book, The Fire Opal Mechanism, kept me enthralled because it was just a little too prescient, all the while managing to be both different from the first while still following the same threads.

This third book does a lovely job of bringing the saga full circle while still telling a story of its own that yet manages to tug on those very same threads – as well as some of the same heartstrings.

All the books in this series are stories about power imbalances, very specifically the vast, sweeping power of tyrannies to control and rewrite history and belief vs. the tiny, subversive but ultimately enduring power of families and family stories to keep the truth alive in spite of the odds and the power of the state to stop them. At the same time, there’s also a bit of the “Mother Nature bats last” trope, as in this ending, the singing jewels and their imbued power have been hunted down and corrupted and yet are still waiting for their chance to rise once more.

The form that each story in the series has taken have also differed, and this entry in the series is very much a story about academia, both dark and light, the viciousness of its politics and policies and the single-mindedness of its pursuers in their intellectual pursuits. And in this particular entry in the series, the power imbalance between an untenured lecturer and the head of their department. This facet of the story had a surprisingly similar vibe to Malka Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes, which I utterly loved.

So even though it doesn’t seem like there will be more stories in the Gem Universe – at least for a while, I do have the sequel to Mimicking, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, to look forward to. And, very much like the way the drama in The Book of Gems plays out, doesn’t that title just scream academic obfuscation? Which is always fun to see knocked down, just as much as it was in The Book of Gems.

Review: Montego by Brian McClellan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Montego by Brian McClellanMontego: A Glass Immortals Novella by Brian McClellan
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: ebook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, gaslamp, steampunk
Series: Glass Immortals #0.5
Pages: 121
Published by Brian McClellan on May 23, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Twelve year-old Montego al'Bou is an orphan, a provincial peasant boy left alone by the recent death of his grandmother. Possessing nothing more than his grandmother's cudgel, he strikes out to the capital where the influential Grappo have offered to bring him up in the luxury of an Ossan guild-family. He finds his welcome frosty, his new home full of confusing responsibilities.

He quickly discovers that the greatest sin in the capital is to be born without money, and the classist elite will not hesitate to remind him of his humble origins. Montego dreams of being his own man, of making it in the cudgeling arenas of the Empire's deadly spectator sport where even a provincial can be worshipped like a god.  But skill isn't the only barrier for a wannabe cudgelist. Without allies, cunning, and a helping of daring, he can't hope to make it in the capital.

My Review:

I picked this up because In the Shadow of Lightning gave me one of those epic book hangovers that lingers LONG after the last page is turned. Lightning is the first book of the Glass Immortals series, so I know that there will be more books to scratch that particular itch – but that doesn’t mean there are even any clues as to when that will occur.

But in the meantime there’s Montego, a combination prequel novella and origin story for one of the primary characters in at least that first book in the series. Or so it seemed when I bought it a couple of weeks ago.

Instead of being merely the origin story for champion cudgelist ‘Baby’ Montego, this is the story of Montego’s first days in the city of Ossa, when this boy from the provinces first met both Demir Grappo and Kizzie Vorcien, and the three children – and they were still children no matter how mature both Demir and Kizzie were forced to act and had come to be – forged a friendship that has the possibility of carrying through for the rest of their days.

It’s the story of how three became one – before politics and time and vastly different stations and personal ambitions and other people’s political shenanigans and political corruption – and did I mention politics? – came between them.

So, on the one hand, we have a lovely story about a boy very much out of his depth, figuring out how he can become who he already knows he wants to be when he grows up – in spite of the many, many decks stacked against him. We’re with him, seeing his world from his very much outsider perspective, as he learns to stand up for himself and his friends and take the blows that life and politics (yes, that again) send his way.

And very much on that other hand, we have the story of a band of unshakeable allies, when they were young and still at least a bit innocent, coming together to take on all comers – before their world and all the enemies in it do their damndest to shake them apart.

Escape Rating A: I had the oddest reaction at the end of Montego. I teared up. Not because this story ends on a sad note, because it doesn’t. It ends on a note of triumph and hope. But I wanted to cry because I know what those hopes lead to, and there’s a lot of heartbreak ahead for Demir, Montego and Kizzie. They just don’t know it yet.

But those of us who have read In the Shadow of Lightning most certainly do.

Which leads to a bit of a dilemma. Because on my third hand, this is a prequel. It is possible to read this without having read Lightning and enjoy it as the story it is on its face. But in that fourth hand I’m holding behind my back, the one with the cudgel in it, what makes this story rise is that if you’ve already read Lightning you know that the fall is coming and it’s epic and bitter and tragic with only the barest hint of hope on the horizon.

So I fell into Montego hard, and was more than a bit choked up at the ending because I know what’s coming and I know that Montego, Demir and Kizzie do not. But I don’t know nearly enough and ‘Glassdamn’ as the characters in this world frequently curse, I can’t wait to find out.

Review: A Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth Cato

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth CatoA Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth Cato
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, historical fantasy
Series: Chefs of the Five Gods #1
Pages: 411
Published by 47North on June 13, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A world on the brink of war and a mother and daughter on the run, in a thrilling novel of swashbuckling adventure, culinary magic, and just desserts.
Adamantine “Ada” Garland has an empathic connection to food and wine, a magical perception of aromas, flavors, and ingredients. Invaluable property of the royal court, Ada was in service to the Five Gods and to the Gods-ordained rulers of Verdania—until she had enough of injustice and bloodshed and deserted, seeking to chart her own destiny. When mysterious assassins ferret her out after sixteen years in hiding, Ada, now a rogue Chef, and her beloved Grand-mère run for their lives, only to find themselves on a path toward an unexpected ally.
A foreign princess in a strange court, Solenn unknowingly shares more with Ada than an epicurean gift. They share blood. With her newfound magical perception, she becomes aware of a plot to kill her fiancé, the prince. It’s part of a ploy by adversarial forces in the rival country of Albion to sow conflict, and Solenn is set up to take the blame.
As Ada’s and Solenn’s paths converge, a mother and her long-lost daughter reunite toward a common goal, and against a shadowy enemy from Ada’s past who is out for revenge. But what sacrifices must be made? What hope is there when powerful Gods pick sides in a war simmering to eruption?

My Review:

There are a thousand quotes about revenge and most of them are not kind to the person seeking it. But it’s possible that the one in the world of these particular five gods is the most bitter, literally and figuratively. “There are a thousand recipes for revenge, and they all taste like scat.”

In other words, revenge tastes like shit. In a world where the ability to perceive and even enhance the qualities of every single thing a person might eat or drink is the highest form of magic, that has to be one of its world’s greatest curses.

And a warning that entirely too many people have refused to heed in this fantastic story that has only just begun.

At first, we’re following two women who don’t seem to have much to do with each other. And even though we don’t know it yet, someone’s revenge has reached out, seemingly from beyond the grave, to do its best to turn both their lives into shit.

Or perhaps something a bit worse but surprisingly edible – even if it really, really shouldn’t be. Which is where this world’s magic comes in.

Ada Garland is one of the chefs blessed by Gyst, the God of Mysteries and Unknowns. Her tongue is literally magic. She can tell whether something is clean or polluted, poisonous or just badly prepared, too salty, too sweet, or perfectly balanced. Her magic allows her to make the dish that a person wants and needs most in that moment – and do it perfectly every time.

And she has the power to turn certain special ingredients, called epicurea, into magical items that will pass their magic on to whoever eats them.

It’s a gift and a curse at the same time, as all blessed chefs in her country are automatically conscripted into the royal service the moment their talents manifest. It’s a service that led Ada to her husband and their child. And it’s a service that split them apart when the alliance between their countries dissolved.

Ada is on the run, and has been for over a decade, taking care of her increasingly unstable grandmother while avoiding the grasping, greedy mother who wants to use her and her talent for ends that are even more unsavory than Ada first believed.

The revenge that reaches out for Ada, her friends and her family threatens to expose all of her secrets – and theirs. If it doesn’t get them all killed first. Or worse. Much, much worse.

Escape Rating A+: I picked this up because I was looking for something else with magical cookery after The Nameless Restaurant. Both stories do feature cookery as Magic with a Capital “M”, but that is the only thing they have in common. I’m still grateful for the push from the one to the other, because A Thousand Recipes for Revenge is just plain awesome and I’m so glad I read it, even if it is making me give the side-eye to pretty much everything I eat.

The magic system here is both fascinating and unsettling at the same time, because it’s all wrapped around magical foods, the ability to create them and the ability to taste them. This is a world where many people can cook, and unsurprisingly so or everyone would starve, but where it takes a gift from the actual gods to be a chef. But the silver lining of that gift comes with plenty of cloud wrapped around it, as both Ada and Princess Solenn discover to their cost.

This is also definitely one of those stories about being better off – or at least sleeping better at night – if one did not know how the sausage was made. It’s a secret that has been brutally suppressed in this world for excellent if entirely terrible reasons.

At first, this seems like a rather typical military type, gaslamp set fantasy. Ada is AWOL from her military service, while our second perspective on this story, Princess Solenn, is in the midst of being married off for a political alliance.

But then Ada’s old comrades start getting killed, Ada’s hidden existence is suddenly under threat, and it seems like she’s on the run from awful but otherwise mundane forces. Until things go completely pear-shaped and the gods start getting involved. At which point it’s off to the races – against time, against death, against the forces of oppression and most especially against petulant beings who would rather play with their food than either nurture it, treat it as a pet or kill it as prey.

And then things get really complicated.

I thought I knew where this was going. And then I thought I knew where this was going. But it didn’t go any of the places I thought it would, but where it did end up was both head spinning and stomach churning as well as a tremendous tease because there had to be more and at first I didn’t realize there was, but there is and oh thank goodness!

Ada and Solenn give readers two heroines to route for, as this is both Ada’s story of picking up the pieces of the life she left behind and Solenn’s coming of age story and both are fantastic. The world’s setup at first seems fairly standard epic fantasy and then goes to places that are fresh (if occasionally rotting) and new and unexpected. There are bits of Bujold’s World of the Five Gods and Jenn Lyons’ A Chorus of Dragons in the way that the gods of this world operate, as well as Guy Gavriel Kay’s and Jacqueline Carey‘s use of real world geography and history as a way of creating a fantasy world’s map and political divisions, but the magic system is just completely off a new wall and it’s marvelous in the way it suffuses the story.

Which, as I squeed earlier, thankfully isn’t done yet. There’s a second book in the Chefs of the Five Gods series, A Feast for Starving Stone, coming in January. And I can’t wait!

Review: Wings Once Cursed and Bound by Piper J. Drake

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Wings Once Cursed and Bound by Piper J. DrakeWings Once Cursed and Bound (Mythwoven, #1) by Piper J. Drake
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, urban fantasy
Series: Mythwoven #1
Pages: 304
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca on April 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For fans of Sarah J. Maas and Jennifer Armentrout comes a bold and captivating fantasy by bestselling author Piper J. Drake.
My wings unbound, I am the Thai bird princessThe kinnareeAnd no matter the cost,I will be free.
Bennet Andrews represents a secret organization of supernatural beings dedicated to locating and acquiring mythical objects, tucking them safely away where they cannot harm the human race. When he meets Peeraphan Rahttana, it's too late—she has already stepped into The Red Shoes, trapped by their curse to dance to her death.
But Bennet isn't the only supernatural looking for deadly artifacts. And when the shoes don't seem to harm Peeraphan, he realizes that he'll have to save her from the likes of creatures she never knew existed. Bennett sweeps Peeraphan into a world of myth and power far beyond anything she ever imagined. There, she finds that magic exists in places she never dreamed—including deep within herself.

My Review:

It’s fitting that Wings Once Cursed & Bound is the first book in the Mythwoven series, as it weaves beings and artifacts from myth and legend into a captivating story that mixes urban fantasy and found family with legends from around the world into a series that draws on familiar tropes and traditions while introducing plenty that is fresh and new.

This story opens when a vampire chases down an artifact from one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and finds himself falling in love with a being out of Thai mythology. (It’s a rare urban fantasy world when a vampire is the most mundane creature around.)

Kinnaree Statue in Chiang Mai – Thailand

The red shoes are designed to seduce humans into putting them on – at which point the shoes are wearing the human until that human is worn to death dancing at the shoes’ command. But Peeraphan Rahttana is more than just human. She’s a kinnaree, a Thai bird princess. She feels the compulsion, but once she becomes conscious of it she can resist.

Not forever, but perhaps for long enough for vampire Bennet Andrews and the secretive Darke Consortium that he represents to find a way to get the damn things off her feet before it’s too late.

Neither the Darke Consortium nor Bennet Andrews himself knew about Peeraphan or her heritage – Bennet was on the track of the shoes. That’s what the Darke Consortium does, they hunt down powerful supernatural, mythical and legendary artifacts and store them safely out of reach. The Consortium reads like a supernatural version of Anna Hackett’s Treasure Hunter Security series or the TV series Warehouse 13.

Bennet Andrews may have found Peeraphan by accident – but those red shoes certainly did not. Someone wanted her dead or at least subdued, someone with unsavory motives and entirely too much money to in finding and even capturing supernatural creatures.

The Darke Consortium wants to put the shoes in a safe place. Peeraphan wants them off her feet before they kill her. Bennet Andrews isn’t quite willing to admit what he wants when it comes to the supernatural but probably not immortal woman with wings.

And someone is out to get them both.

Escape Rating A: This was my second read of Wings Once Cursed & Bound, as I read it several months ago for a Library Journal review and utterly adored it. I chose it in the first place because I loved the author’s science fiction romance back in the day (and it’s being re-released, YAY!), and was hoping this would be every bit as good if in a different genre.

Those hopes were most definitely realized.

What made this so much fun was the way that it was like “Old Skool” urban fantasy, Treasure Hunter Security and Simon R. Green’s Gideon Sable series had a book baby that blended all the familiar aspects of all those books and genres and mixed in fresh elements from classic fairy tales with new-to-me myths and legends with an otherworldly found family and a fantasy romance that eschewed the tried-too-many-times tropes and archetypes.

Bennet Andrews may be a vampire, but he’s not giving off any of that “I’m unworthy of love” vibe. Instead he’s heartbroken and grieving and not sure he can face another loss. That the Darke Consortium is run by a dragon is just too fantastic for words, especially when you acknowledge that the dragon, Bennet the vampire and Peerophan’s “cousin” Thomas the werewolf are the most mundane members of a rather eclectic household and crew.

The creepy villain is very creepy, and Peerophan’s situation gets very desperate, but in the end she rescues herself – which is always my favorite way for the heroine to get out of the jam the book has put her in.

There was just a lot to love in Wings Once Cursed & Bound, both in itself and as the opening of the Mythwoven series. I’m really looking forward to the author’s next forays into this magical version of our world. Her blog indicates that she has a novella series set in this world planned for later in 2023 and I’m highly hopeful for another magical read!

Review: The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose UtomiThe Lies of the Ajungo (Forever Desert, #1) by Moses Ose Utomi
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Forever Desert #1
Pages: 96
Published by Tordotcom on March 21, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Moses Ose Utomi's debut novella, The Lies of the Ajungo, follows one boy’s epic quest to bring water back to his city and save his mother’s life. Prepare to enter the Forever Desert.
A Library Journal Best Book of the Month! They say there is no water in the City of Lies. They say there are no heroes in the City of Lies. They say there are no friends beyond the City of Lies. But would you believe what they say in the City of Lies? In the City of Lies, they cut out your tongue when you turn thirteen, to appease the terrifying Ajungo Empire and make sure it continues sending water. Tutu will be thirteen in three days, but his parched mother won’t last that long. So Tutu goes to his oba and makes a deal: she provides water for his mother, and in exchange he will travel out into the desert and bring back water for the city. Thus begins Tutu’s quest for the salvation of his mother, his city, and himself.
The Lies of the Ajungo opens the curtains on a tremendous world, and begins the epic fable of the Forever Desert. With every word, Moses Ose Utomi weaves magic.

My Review:

The Lies of the Ajungo is a story that reads like a myth, and is also a story about mythmaking, sitting comfortably at the intersection of fable and fantasy and making the reader uncomfortable in its stark descriptions of how easily people can be led to believe a lie – and the lengths that the powerful will go to maintain it.

If those people are desperate enough and if their oppressors are both ruthless and clever. Very, very clever.

Tutu grew up under the incessant drumbeat of the oppressive, repressive, depressive mantras about his city. A city that has come to be known as ‘The City of Lies’. But Tutu is too desperate to let those endlessly repeated phrases keep him from his quest to be a hero for his city and find water to save his city and his mother. Mostly, to save his mother.

What he finds on his trek through the Forever Desert is that everything that has been said about his city is a lie, and that the name is the biggest lie of all.

He finds friends and companions. They help train him to become a hero – and he helps to train them as well. And they all believe in each other – because they are all from ‘The City of Lies’ and nothing about any of their cities is what they thought. Or were taught. Or believed.

They find the truth, a truth that has the possibility of setting their cities free of the lies told by their conquerors.

If only the rest of their people can set aside all the lies they have been told and tear down each city’s Palace of Lies.

Escape Rating A+: I loved this when I read it last year for a Library Journal review, and I loved it just as much when I reread it last week. It’s an awesome and thoughtful story and I don’t think I can do it justice, but I’m going to try.

The story begins as a tragic but rather typical epic fantasy-type quest. When Tutu sets out he’s the young hero, the chosen one, setting out to save his people. We’ve seen this story before, and if it had continued in that vein it would have been beautifully written but not necessarily special beyond that.

And that’s where it takes its turn into that something special, as Tutu gets a big chunk of his naivete blasted away, learns that his quest has a cost, and discovers that he and his city are not alone. That a heinous crime is being committed, and committed in such a way as to inflict maximum cruelty at minimum cost to as many people as possible.

Which is when the story shifts from epic quest for water to even more epic quest for justice. The truth sets Tutu and his companions free, even as it grieves them for everything that all of their peoples have lost over the centuries, and just how terribly they have all been betrayed.

What made this even more fascinating is that there’s no magic involved in any of it. There’s no Sauron or Palpatine. No monster and no supervillain. It’s just people behaving very, very badly and other people being at first terribly gullible and eventually just terribly downtrodden.

While Tutu learns, to his cost, that both sides are invested in maintaining that narrative, whether because they want to keep the power they have illicitly gained or because they can bear to have their illusions destroyed of simply because they’ve just drunk way too much of the ‘kool-aid’ and can’t let go of their beliefs.

It’s possible to read The Lies of the Ajungo as merely the epic quest it first appeared to be. But the more one thinks about it, the more the sand of that desert blows into the cracks of that initial interpretation. It’s a story that stuck with me the first time I read it, and it’s still sticking this time as well.

I always love a good story that also makes me think, and The Lies of the Ajungo is most definitely that. I highly recommend this quickly read fantasy that will leave you with a long book hangover of was and would be and might have been and might yet be kinds of thoughts.

The Forever Desert is a place that is more than capable of holding multiple legends, but when I read The Lies of the Ajungo last year it seemed as if those stories would remain untold. I’m very happy to say that is no longer the case, and a second story from the Forever Desert, The Truth of the Aleke, will be published this time next year. A story which sounds every bit as beautiful, harrowing and yes, legendary, as this first one.

Review: The Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran Wilde

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran WildeThe Fire Opal Mechanism (Gem Universe #2) by Fran Wilde
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Gem Universe #2
Pages: 208
Published by Tordotcom Publishing on June 4, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Fire Opal Mechanism is the fast-paced and lively sequel to Fran Wilde's The Jewel and Her Lapidary
Jewels and their lapidaries and have all but passed into myth.
Jorit, broke and branded a thief, just wants to escape the Far Reaches for something better. Ania, a rumpled librarian, is trying to protect her books from the Pressmen, who value knowledge but none of the humanity that generates it.
When they stumble upon a mysterious clock powered by an ancient jewel, they may discover secrets in the past that will change the future forever.

My Review:

Information may want to be free, but there are always people and institutions working to keep it caged and under their control. At first, that argument seems to be the central tension in The Fire Opal Mechanism.

This turned out to be a whole lot more relevant to the present than I originally expected. Which was both wonderful and frightening, as it was published 4 years ago and therefore written several months at least before that.

But the impulses that move both the Pressmen’s and the Librarian Ania’s resistance to each other are always with us. Even more fascinating, those motives and that resistance turn out to be a bit of misdirection from the real problem that Ania and her reluctant ally-turned-friend, Jorit, need to resolve.

In whatever time period they can manage to solve it.

Escape Rating A-: At first, and for a rather long time thereafter, it seems as if the core of The Fire Opal Mechanism is about the freedom of information versus the censorship of it. And yet, at the beginning – the beginning that Ania and Jorit observe and not the place where they personally start – that wasn’t actually the case.

There’s more to unpack there than the reader initially has a clue about. The conflict seems so obvious. The Pressmen – the people who belong to the cult of the Great Press – have come to the last university in the Six Kingdoms to set information free by confiscating all the books and feeding them all to the machine that will literally chew them up and spit them out as part of the all-encompassing Compendium of Knowledge that the machine is producing.

That initial conflict turns out to be a bit too simplistic once Ania sees the Pressmen blow something into people’s faces that causes them to forget who they are. That the same substance erases text whenever it falls upon a book adds to those doubts. Which are stripped away entirely when someone picks up a copy of the Compendium and watches as the print turns from a faithful reproduction of an original – now consumed – work to an overtly propagandist interpretation that spouts the Pressmen’s view of history.

Which is when Ania, with Jorit tagging along, learns that the clock mechanism she has been clinging to for comfort and safety can take her and her companion back through time. Back to the origins of the Pressmen and their conflict with the universities.

Where she discovers that what she is experiencing in her present is a corruption of a past created by the Great Press that has been erased by that same object. And that the Great Press itself is the biggest and most dangerous corruption of all.

In this year of 2023, when book bans are everywhere and governments daily attempt to rewrite history to make their favored groups feel better about themselves in both the past and the present, it’s easy to become invested in the narrative of the brave librarian fighting the forces of evil repression the Pressmen represent – especially for a librarian.

But that’s far from the whole story. Just as The Fire Opal Mechanism loops Ania and Jorit back to the beginning of the conflict, it also wraps the story back to the history of the Gem Universe as a whole as experienced in the first book in the series, The Jewel and Her Lapidary.

That shifting and sifting through time changes the story from its initial, overt conflict about information wanting to be free to being a bit more of ‘the truth will set you free’ because it’s only once Ania and Jorit learn the truth about the Great Press and the origins of the Pressmen by traveling to the past that they are able to find the explosive and cathartic solution they very much need in the present.

That their harrowing journey together bonds Ania and Jorit in their own mutual truth is the sparkling icing on a very tasty and thought-provoking little book-cake.

I decided to read The Fire Opal Mechanism now because I just picked up a copy of the third book in the Gem Universe, The Book of Gems. I was planning to dive right into it, believing that I had already read the first two books in the series, only to discover that while I adored The Jewel and Her Lapidary, I hadn’t actually read this second book. So I immediately set out to rectify that situation and I’m very glad I did. The Book of Gems awaits!

Review: In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellanIn the Shadow of Lightning (Glass Immortals, #1) by Brian McClellan
Narrator: Damian Lynch
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, steampunk
Series: Glass Immortals #1
Pages: 576
Length: 24 hours and 53 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on June 21, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From Brian McClellan, author of The Powder Mage trilogy, comes the first novel in the Glass Immortals series, In the Shadow of Lightning, an epic fantasy where magic is a finite resource—and it’s running out.
"Excellent worldbuilding and a truly epic narrative combine into Brian's finest work to date. Heartily recommended to anyone who wants a new favorite fantasy series to read."—Brandon Sanderson
Demir Grappo is an outcast—he fled a life of wealth and power, abandoning his responsibilities as a general, a governor, and a son. Now he will live out his days as a grifter, rootless, and alone. But when his mother is brutally murdered, Demir must return from exile to claim his seat at the head of the family and uncover the truth that got her killed: the very power that keeps civilization turning, godglass, is running out.
Now, Demir must find allies, old friends and rivals alike, confront the powerful guild-families who are only interested in making the most of the scraps left at the table and uncover the invisible hand that threatens the Empire. A war is coming, a war unlike any other. And Demir and his ragtag group of outcasts are the only thing that stands in the way of the end of life as the world knows it.
"Powerful rival families, murderous conspiracies, epic battles, larger-than-life characters, and magic."—Fonda Lee, author of The Green Bone Saga
"Engaging, fast-paced and epic."—James Islington, author of In The Shadow of What Was Lost
"Clever, fun, and by turns beautifully bloody, In the Shadow of Lightning hits like a bolt through a stained glass window."—Megan E. O'Keefe, author of Chaos Vector

My Review:

As the story opens, Demir Grappo is Icarus, and we see him in the moment of his spectacular fall. A cocky young genius both in politics and on the battlefield, we catch him just at the moment when he learns that someone has decided that he has flown too close to the sun – and that it is time to clip his wings. Or burn them.

It’s a broken man who slinks away from that battlefield, covered in disgrace where there should have been glory. To say that Demir plans to hide in the lowest and meanest places he can find is a bit of an overstatement. We’d call it a psychotic break. He just runs away from his shame and his responsibilities.

Nine years later the young man is a bit older, even sadder, and doesn’t see himself as any wiser at all. He is doing a better job of getting through the days, but he has no plans, no hopes, no dreams beyond doing that for another day.

Until an old friend finds him in the back of beyond, to tell Demir that has mother Adriana Grappo, the Matriarch of the Grappo guild family, has been assassinated. And that Demir is now Patriarch, if he is willing to take up the mantle, the reins, and the responsibility he left behind.

He’ll go home to protect his guild family and hunt down his mother’s killers. Even on his worst day – and he’s had plenty of them in the intervening years – he’d be able to smell the stink of a coverup no matter how far away he was from the seething cesspit of politics and corruption that is the capital of the Ossan Empire.

Demir is willing to tear the Empire down to get the truth. Little does he know that the plot he plans to uncover will require him to save it – whether it deserves it or not.

Escape Rating A+: “Glassdamn.” It rolls easily through the mind, or trippingly off the tongue, as though it’s an epithet that we’ve always used – or at least could have if we’d had a mind to. And glassdamnit but this is a terrific story.

It’s “glassdamn” because the scientific sorcery that powers the story and the world it explores is based on the use of specifically tuned, resonating glass to provide its power. While there are multiple religions in the world none of the deities or pantheons rule much of anything. Glass is king, queen and knave and everyone swears by it and at it and about it all day long.

Glassdamn, indeed.

The title is a bit of a pun. Our protagonist, if not necessarily or always our hero, Demir Grappo, spends the entire story living in the shadow of the political and glass dancer prodigy “The Lightning Prince” – his own former self, the self that he has been running from for all these years. Demir and the man he once was are going to have to come to some kind of resolution if he is going to have even half a chance at fixing everything that’s wrong with Ossa, with his guild family, with sorcery and especially with himself. It’s difficult to tell which will be the hardest job.

The story is told from several perspectives, so that the reader is able to see what’s happening over the vast sprawling canvas that is this first book in a protected trilogy. While we follow Demir, we also have a chance to see the Ossan empire from other points of view, including the childhood friends he brings back to the capital to help him in both his quest and his more mundane work, the master craftswoman he partners with in order to carry out his mother’s last request, and his uncle Tadeus, an officer in Ossa’s much vaunted Foreign Legion, an army that takes nearly as big a fall as Demir once did.

They may rise together – or they may discover that the game is beyond them all. It’s a question that is not yet answered when the story concludes. Which is utterly fitting for the first book in a trilogy. I just wish I had an inkling of when the second book is going to be available, because this is a story that left me with a terrible book hangover. I can’t wait to go back.

One of the things that both sucked me in and drove me crazy about In the Shadow of Lightning, but which also explains why I liked it so glassdamn much, is the sheer number of recent stories it reminded me of, as well as one long-loved classic and, surprisingly, a videogame.

Throwing Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham, Engines of Empire by R.S. Ford, and Isolate by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. into an industrial-strength book blender will get you close to the feel of In the Shadow of Lightning. All are stories of empires that have already rotted from the head down. All have ‘magic’ that is treated scientifically, to the point where their worlds are all much closer to steampunk than to epic fantasy – which doesn’t stop all of them from BEING epic fantasy anyway. None of them are about classic contests between ‘good’ and ‘evil’; instead all are about people attempting to turn back the tide of the type of evil that results from power corrupting. These series starters are not exactly like each other, but they all ‘feel’ very similar and if you like one you’ll probably get equally immersed in one of the others.

The individual character of Demir Grappo, that mercurial broken genius, appearing as antihero considerably more often than hero, trying to save as much as he can and willing to sacrifice whatever it takes into the bargain, recalled a character from a much different time and place, but whose story was still conducted over a sprawling canvas. If you’ve ever read the Lymond Chronicles (start with The Game of Kings) by Dorothy Dunnett, Demir is very much in Lymond’s mold – and it was a bit heartbreaking to watch Demir making entirely too many of the same mistakes and sacrifices. I’m also wondering if he’s going to face some of Lymond’s desperate compromises and am trepidatiously looking forward to finding out.

And for anyone who has played the Dragon Age series of videogames, the corrupt guild family political power brokering – as well as the open use of assassination as a political tool – bears a surprisingly sharp resemblance to the Antivan Crows. I half expected someone to leave a message that “the Crows send their regards,” because they most certainly would, with respect upfront and a knife in the back.

The audio made that last bit even more evocative because the narrator did one hell of a job with all the accents. He also told a damn good story, giving the feeling that we were in each character’s head when it was their turn “on stage”, and making each and every voice distinct. AND he managed to put me so completely inside both Demir’s and Tessa’s heads that I would have to stop for a few minutes because I could tell that whatever was coming next was going to be awful, and I cared so much that I almost couldn’t bear to experience it so closely with them.

So, if you enjoy big sprawling epics, whether fantasy or SF, In the Shadow of Lightning is just the kind of world-spanning, world-shattering, monsterful and wonderful binge read just waiting to happen!

I can’t wait for that glassdamned second book in the trilogy. I really, really can’t.

Review: Shenanigans by Mercedes Lackey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Shenanigans by Mercedes LackeyShenanigans (Tales of Valdemar, #16) by Mercedes Lackey
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: anthologies, epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Tales of Valdemar #16, Valdemar (Publication order) #55
Pages: 336
Published by DAW Books on December 13, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This sixteenth anthology of short stories set in the beloved Valdemar universe features tales by debut and established authors and a brand-new story from Lackey herself.
The Heralds of Valdemar are the kingdom's ancient order of protectors. They are drawn from all across the land, from all walks of life, and at all ages--and all are Gifted with abilities beyond those of normal men and women. They are Mindspeakers, FarSeers, Empaths, ForeSeers, Firestarters, FarSpeakers, and more. These inborn talents--combined with training as emissaries, spies, judges, diplomats, scouts, counselors, warriors, and more--make them indispensable to their monarch and realm. Sought and Chosen by mysterious horse-like Companions, they are bonded for life to these telepathic, enigmatic creatures. The Heralds of Valdemar and their Companions ride circuit throughout the kingdom, protecting the peace and, when necessary, defending their land and monarch.

My Review:

Last week’s Into the West – and Beyond before it – focused on the very serious adventure of the Founding of Valdemar. Kordas Valdemar and Company’s epic journey gave series fans a much better idea of just how much blood, sweat and tears went into the creation of the place that we all love. But that’s certainly not all there is to Valdemar.

Shenanigans, the sixteenth book in the Tales of Valdemar subseries (after last year’s Boundaries), presents series readers with a treat of a present for this holiday season, as the stories within are exactly what the title names them – shenanigans.

While there’s a bit of derring-do, Shenanigans is a collection of marvelous, funny and often marvelously funny stories set in all the periods of Valdemar history among all of the many peoples and creatures that make the place so much fun to read about for so many glorious years.

In spite of the blurb, most of the stories in Shenanigans do not revolve around the Companions and their Chosen. Some do, of course, or it wouldn’t be a Valdemar collection, but quite a few of the shenanigans in the collection thereof are more slice of life stories, and there are a fair number that feature people with telepathic “gifts” that are not Chosen and may not even wish to be.

Of course, there are also several stories set among the students of the Collegium, because, well, students and pranking make for a fun story no matter what world they’re set in.

Which leads to my two favorite stories in the collection, “Pranks for the Memories” by Dee Shull and “Fool’s Week” by Anthea Sharp. The stories are similar, but they are still both excellent. It’s spring. The students are restless. (Probably every teacher everywhere is nodding their head at THAT idea). In “Pranks” one student mentions a family tradition of a week of pranking. In “Fool’s Week”, someone remembers that there used to be a traditional “fool’s week” at the Collegium until the practice, not unsurprisingly, got out of hand.

It’s suddenly in hand again, to the point where even the teachers are participating. And it’s hilarious!

The other standouts – at least for this reader – come in pairs. “All Around the Bell Tower” by Stephanie Shaver and “A Bouquet of Gifts, or The Culinary Adventures of Rork” by Michele Lang. Both are stories about young girls who have gifts that the people around them can’t quite identify – and that give them each more than a few problems. What each child needs is someone to both listen and understand. The story in “Bell Tower” is a bit more traditional Valdemar in that it’s her Companion that finally brings help in the persons of both themself and their accompanying Heralds. In “A Bouquet of Gifts” we get a much fuller than usual portrait of the helpful hertasi as Rork the chef, as he sets up a feast for a returning friend, also makes a new one – along with a menagerie of mischievously ‘helpful’ creatures and animals.

We saw a lot of the hertasi in Into the West and it’s lovely to see them again here.

And then there are the two stories that include both romance and adventure in equal measure – if on nearly opposite ends of the socioeconomic strata. “A Cry of Hounds” by Elisabeth Waters and “One Trick Pony” by Diana Paxson. “Hounds” is set in the King’s Court of Valdemar. Lord Repulsive’s father is dead, and Lord Repulsive himself is trying to marry off his 12-year-old stepdaughter. In reality, he’s selling his 12-year-old stepdaughter and trying to keep the King from finding out that the child is only 12. Because he will not approve the marriage once he learns, and he will not be amused when he discovers the deception. And he is not. Lord Repulsive gets what’s coming to him with the help of his castoff brother, his sister-in-law and every dog she talks to with her AnimalSpeech. And he deserves every bit of it. (Lord Repulsive really is repulsive. It’s not his real name but “if the shoe fits” or in this case, more like “if the Foo shits”…)

Last but not least there’s, Diana Paxson’s “One Trick Pony”, which mixes a bit of the bittersweet memory of heartbreak and the horrors of war into its story about a man who has found peace after grief and war by gardening, and the way that peace is invaded by a woman who reopens his heart and a newly born Companion who is learning the limits of their own power one prank at a time.

Escape Rating B: After the necessary seriousness of Into the West, the mostly lighthearted tales of Shenanigans were an absolute delight. As with most collections, not every single story hits its mark, but more than enough of them to make Shenanigans a treat for Valdemar fans. Certainly something to tide us all over as we wait for Gryphon in Light, coming in June.

Review: Into the West by Mercedes Lackey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Into the West by Mercedes LackeyInto the West (The Founding of Valdemar, #2) by Mercedes Lackey
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: The Founding of Valdemar #2, Valdemar (Publication order) #54, Valdemar (Chronological) #5
Pages: 496
Published by DAW Books on December 13, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The long-awaited founding of Valdemar comes to life in this second book in the new series from a New York Times-bestselling author and beloved fantasist.
Baron Valdemar and his people have found a temporary haven, but it cannot hold all of them, or for long. Trouble could follow on their heels at any moment, and there are too many people for Crescent Lake to support. Those who are willing to make a further trek by barge on into the West will follow him into a wilderness depopulated by war and scarred by the terrible magics of a thousand years ago and the Mage Wars. But the wilderness is not as empty as it seems. There are potential friends and rapacious foes....
....and someone is watching them.

My Review:

We already knew the destination. What Valdemar is, what it became, seemed fully formed all the way back in Arrows of the Queen, which takes place almost 1400 years after the founding of Valdemar and was originally published in 1987. We’ve known the destination for a very long time.

This is the journey. Literally. Just as Beyond was the final push to start that journey, Into the West is the journey itself. Complete with all the cold, mud AND bugs that any adventure requires.

But, where Beyond was a story of running away, Into the West is a story about running towards.

As high as the stakes were, and still are, in the events that opened the way for Valdemar and his people to leave the corrupt Eastern Empire, the story itself built to a big climax – even bigger than Kordas Valdemar himself expected.

That part’s over. They’ve gotten away – at least for the moment. They believe that they left enough of a mess behind that it will take some time for the Empire to get its political shit into a big enough and unified enough pile to come after them.

Leaving a crater where the capital used to be should keep things back in the Empire in disarray for quite some time. At least until the surviving nobles and warlords and military commanders shake out which of them is going to be in charge and possibly charge after the fleeing Valdemarians.

If they can even find them after however much time that’s going to take.

So the big thing that everyone was working towards has been accomplished. Everyone was willing to unite towards that gigantic and hugely dangerous common goal. Into the West is the story of what happens next.

On the one hand, it’s an adventure. They are headed, as the title proclaims, into the west. To the place where the Mage Wars magically corrupted the land and everything on it centuries before. Kordas Valdemar knows that the land is still dangerous, but hopes that the intervening centuries have allowed the land to recover enough to make it habitable for his people.

On the other hand, it’s every bit as much of a political story as Beyond. But like the difference between running away and running towards that is the lynchpin of each book, Beyond’s portrait of the Eastern Empire was a lesson in what NOT to do and what NOT to be. It’s up to Baron Valdemar, the man who will be Valdemar’s first king, to figure out what his country and its people should do and will be in the centuries to come.

All they have to do is get past all the things and people that want to kill them along the way.

Escape Rating B: If you’ve read Beyond – and I highly recommend it – Into the West picks up just where Beyond leaves off. That Valdemar and his people are now beyond the reach of the Empire and are headed into the west.

Which makes this a much different type of story than the previous book – one that isn’t quite as exciting – but is very much necessary – in the opening several chapters.

The big story, of course, centers around Kordas Valdemar, the man who will be the first king of the country that will be named after him. If one has even read a cursory summary of the previous published books in the Valdemar series – which nearly all come AFTER this one in the internal chronology – one already knows that Kordas succeeded. He did become the legendarily good king that the history books talk about nearly a millennium later in The Last Herald-Mage series.

Which, by the way, doesn’t mean you have to have read any of the series previously in order to enjoy Beyond and Into the West. And certainly not that you have to have read any of them recently. Like even in this century recently.

But Into the West is the story of Kordas, not as a myth or a legend, but as a man facing a seemingly impossible job with an all-too-real case of impostor syndrome. He has to do this, He promised his people he’d do this. He’s in over his head and knows it – not that anyone wouldn’t be over their head under the circumstances.

He’s doing the best he can to make the best decisions he can to save not just the most people but the most people with the right ethics and the right moral compass along the way.

So this is the portrait of the legend as a real man, with all his flaws and all his virtues. And by the nature of that portrait, it is also an up close and personal view of how the sausage of government gets made.

For a lot of the story, their journey reads as more of a series of vignettes than a continuous narrative. While there are hints of the everyday drudgery of getting this mass of folks moving, the high points of the story naturally occur when things happen. Sometimes disastrously but just as often when conflicts are avoided or when kindness is paid forward and back along the way.

And then at the end they learn just what it is they’ve let themselves into – and it’s explosive and page-turning and even brutally epic.

But the getting there has a couple of hitches that Beyond didn’t, one which deals with the story in its present, and one which has its impact because of the future that is known but hasn’t happened yet. And one bittersweet heartbreaker to tempt us all to keep reading or go back and read again.

There’s a piece of Into the West that is a coming of age story for Kordas’ much younger sister-in-law Delia. In order to help her get over her entirely too obvious and cringeworthy crush on him, Kordas assigns her to a forward scouting party. It’s the making of her and gives the story a way of seeing the perils, trials and tribulations of this big journey at a much smaller and more easily encompassed scale. But her mooncalf obsession over Kordas really slowed the story down until she finally started to get over it.

The second hitch was the expedition’s winter rescue by the Hawkbrothers. As it occurs, it reads very much like a deus ex machina that shortcuts past a lot of what would have been a hard, killing winter even without the surrounding monsters. Once it happens, it does feel like something that had to have happened because it already did. It also provides a touching pause between disasters just before the newly fledged Valdemarians discover that their oh-so-convenient rescuers weren’t nearly as all-knowing as they pretended to be.

When Into the West wraps up after a truly epic concluding battle, the story is at a point where it could be the end of this Valdemar subseries. But I hope it isn’t, and that’s because of that bittersweet little heartbreaker at the end.

The one signature feature of the entire Valdemar series that we do not see in either Beyond or Into the West are the marvelous, magical, horse-like Companions who serve as guides, friends and even consciences of the best and brightest that Valdemar the country has to offer. But I think we’ve met the people who will become them, and in a scene that just about breaks the heart we get just a hint of what depth of love and kind of sacrifice was needed to make the Companions possible. And I want there to be a third book in the Founding of Valdemar so I can find out if I’ve guessed right.

But in the meantime there’s a new collection of Valdemar stories, Shenanigans, that I’ll be reviewing next week followed by a new novel about Valdemar’s legendary gryphons, Gryphon in Light, coming this summer.