Genre: portal fantasy

Review: Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuireBeneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3) by Seanan McGuire
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, portal fantasy, urban fantasy, young adult
Series: Wayward Children #3
Pages: 174
Published by Tordotcom on January 9, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Beneath the Sugar Sky, the third book in McGuire's Wayward Children series, returns to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children in a standalone contemporary fantasy for fans of all ages. At this magical boarding school, children who have experienced fantasy adventures are reintroduced to the "real" world.
When Rini lands with a literal splash in the pond behind Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, the last thing she expects to find is that her mother, Sumi, died years before Rini was even conceived. But Rini can’t let Reality get in the way of her quest – not when she has an entire world to save! (Much more common than one would suppose.) If she can't find a way to restore her mother, Rini will have more than a world to save: she will never have been born in the first place. And in a world without magic, she doesn’t have long before Reality notices her existence and washes her away. Good thing the student body is well-acquainted with quests...
A tale of friendship, baking, and derring-do. Warning: May contain nuts.

My Review:

I have read the Wayward Children series completely out of order, so instead of the usual 1,2,3 progression it’s been 1,6,7,2 and now three. And it still makes sense – or at least as much sense as it’s supposed to consider that many of the doors that the children who come to Miss West’s School have come through have been from worlds with more than a bit of Nonsense in them.

As does the world of Confection, the place the late and much lamented Sumi came from, and to which she expected to return. Not just hoped, but actually expected, because Sumi was from Confection, and she had been told she had a destiny there that she had to go back and meet when the time was right.

But Sumi’s destiny was interrupted by Jack and Jill’s bloodthirsty quest to re-open their door back to the Moors in Every Heart a Doorway – and I just realized that the title is a bit of a macabre pun because by a certain interpretation Sumi’s bloody heart was literally Jack and Jill’s doorway. So when Sumi’s daughter Rini, a daughter Sumi was much, much too young to have already had before she was killed, literally drops out of the sky into a fountain at the school, there’s more than a bit of problem and a quest has certainly come knocking on Miss West’s door – in spite of the sign that prohibits quests on school grounds.

Rini is in the middle of a Back to the Future situation. Specifically, the situation in the first movie where Marty starts disappearing because he’s changed the timeline too much and won’t be born. Rini is in the same predicament, even though it’s not her fault that her mother won’t be coming back to Confection to marry her father and give birth to her.

But it’s not just Rini herself that’s being erased. The entire timeline where Sumi saved Confection from the evil and entirely too Orderly and Logical Queen of Cakes is also being erased – with disastrous consequences for the people of Confection.

In order to save Rini and save her world, several of the children are going to have to whistle Sumi’s bones out of her grave and take them on a journey to the Lord of the Dead to see if there’s a way to bring Sumi back from death and save both her world and her daughter.

It’s an adventure. It’s something to do while they each wait for their own doors to open again. And it will save Sumi, Rini, and their entire world. Unless the children lose themselves along the way.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up now because I read Where the Drowned Girls Go for a Library Journal review last month and, while I didn’t have any problems getting into the story, it was pretty clear that the characters in that 7th book in the series had been on previous adventures together. Beneath the Sugar Sky looked like one of those previous adventures, so I was determined to get to it as soon as possible.

Not that one can’t read this series entirely out of order as I seem to be doing. It’s just that there’s clearly important stuff that I missed and now I want to know what it was. So here we are. Or there they are.

The story in Beneath the Sugar Sky is a story wrapped around found family and friendship. It’s not that Kade, Cora, Christopher and Nadya don’t want to save Rini and her world, because they absolutely do. But their real motivation for taking on this quest is to save their friend Sumi. They don’t know Rini yet but Sumi is loved and missed and their quest is to bring her back to life.

Along the way the quest becomes as much about saving each other as resurrecting their friend, with a huge heaping helping about body shaming, accepting yourself for who you are and living your best life as that person, and learning how to make your strengths really, really count when the chips are down – even if most people see those strengths as faults or weaknesses.

All of that is at the heart of Cora’s story, a story which continues for certain in Where the Drowned Girls Go, but also possibly in Come Tumbling Down, which I have not read yet and obviously need to. Because it was Cora’s story in Drowned Girls that made me go flying backwards through the rest of the series. I picked this up because I wanted to know more about Cora’s story and now that I know more I want to know even more. And I will.

But first I have In an Absent Dream to look forward to. And I so definitely am!

Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuireDown Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children, #2) by Seanan McGuire
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, portal fantasy, urban fantasy, young adult
Series: Wayward Children #2
Pages: 187
Published by Tordotcom on June 13, 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.
This is the story of what happened first…
Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.
Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got.
They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.
They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

My Review:

I’ve read this series completely out of order, at least once I read the first book, Every Heart a Doorway, first. I’m coming into this book, the second book in the series, after having read the sixth, Across the Green Grass Fields, and the seventh, Where the Drowned Girls Go.

There are a few messages that permeate the series, lessons about learning to march to the beat of your own drummer, recognizing that conformity is a trap, that magic is real and that there is no one right way to be a girl, or a boy, or a human, or a monster, or all of the above at the same time.

But the number one lesson is that adults can’t be trusted. It’s a lesson that Jacqueline and Jillian Wolcott seem to have absorbed along with their parents’ continuously reinforced messages about being who their parents want them each to be and not anything about who they really are. Except twins, and sisters, and forced into opposing straitjackets.

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have applied that number one lesson nearly broadly enough.

Escape Rating A-: Jack and Jill Wolcott are just two of the Wayward Children that we met in Every Heart a Doorway. This is the story of how they got to be the people we met in that first book, and it’s a doozy.

This is a story about the power of choice and also about the force of choice denied. Jacqueline was expected to be the girliest of girls, a perfect fairy tale princess, because that’s what her mother planned for her daughter to be. Jillian was the scruffiest and most adventurous of tomboys, because that’s what her father decided to settle on when he got a second daughter instead of the son he expected.

The problem with their childhood wasn’t that either of those roles are either right or wrong, just that neither of them got to try out anything except their parent’s expectations, and neither of them ever got to experiment or deviate from the role they had been assigned just about at birth.

When they stepped through their door into the dangerous world of the Moors, they were each faced with a choice. And they each chose to have the experience they’d been denied. Jill became a pampered princess, and Jack became a hard-working apprentice.

But this is the Moors, where everything follows the pattern of stories about monsters. The pampered princess was enthralled by her vampire master, and the apprentice was learning her trade from a mad scientist.

So each got to explore the parts of their nature that their parents refused to even acknowledge, letting Jill finally be pretty, pampered and cruel, while Jack was scrupulous, intelligent and practical. Until Jill’s ruthless cruelty destroyed Jack’s hard-won life and they both had to return to the world of their birth.

A world that isn’t ready to take either of them back, leading them to their residence at Miss West’s Home for Wayward Children and bringing the entire story full circle.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones could be read before Every Heart a Doorway, but they probably work better in the proper order. It feels deeper to learn about how Jack and Jill got to be who they are after seeing the place they end up. We’re also able to appreciate the tragedy of their story, not just because Jack loved and lost in the Moors, but because Jack really had found a home that was perfect for her, a home she was forced to give up to save her sister.

But the lessons are still there. Jack and Jill couldn’t trust their parents before they left and can’t trust them after their return either. Jill shouldn’t have trusted her Master on the Moors, where Jack’s skepticism served her very well. The choices of their own hearts served them better, for select definitions of better in Jill’s case, than did the expectation of their parents. That happiness and fulfillment can be found in the unlikeliest of places.

And that love is all there is is all we know of love.

Review: Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah BakerOver the Woodward Wall (The Up-and-Under, #1) by A. Deborah Baker
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, portal fantasy, young adult
Series: Up-and-Under #1
Pages: 204
Published by Tordotcom on October 6, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

If you trust her you’ll never make it home…
Avery is an exceptional child. Everything he does is precise, from the way he washes his face in the morning, to the way he completes his homework – without complaint, without fuss, without prompt.
Zib is also an exceptional child, because all children are, in their own way. But where everything Avery does and is can be measured, nothing Zib does can possibly be predicted, except for the fact that she can always be relied upon to be unpredictable.
They live on the same street.They live in different worlds.
On an unplanned detour from home to school one morning, Avery and Zib find themselves climbing over a stone wall into the Up and Under – an impossible land filled with mystery, adventure and the strangest creatures.
And they must find themselves and each other if they are to also find their way out and back to their own lives.

My Review:

If Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the grandparent book, and Narnia and Oz were the parent books – but wait, there’s another generation in there. If Alice was the great-grandparent, Narnia and Oz were the grandparents and Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame was the parent – perhaps with her Wayward Children series as the aunts and uncles – you’d get something like Over the Woodward Wall, and hopefully the following books in The Up-and-Under series, as the book-children.

Not that Over the Woodward Wall isn’t perfectly understandable and enjoyable without having read any of the above. But if you’re familiar with any of them, you can kind of see them looking on with pride and possibly a bit of chagrin, as all progenitors sometimes do, at the actions of their new and often unruly and less than well behaved descendent.

At least Zib is poorly behaved, according to some lights. Including her fellow adventurer Avery when this story begins.

It’s hard to get the comparisons to Wonderland, Narnia and Oz out of your head while reading Over the Woodward Wall. If Wonderland had physically reached out and grabbed Alice, instead of just grabbing her emotionally or psychologically, and if she’d been operating on the buddy system, the beginning of her story might be even closer to Woodward Wall.

Like Wonderland and Narnia, there are four kings and queens – or there are supposed to be four kings and queens. But the royals currently in office are all rather like the Wicked Witch of the West, or the White Witch in Narnia. While the road that Zib and Avery are traveling on, like the Yellow Brick Road of Oz, is neither as straight nor as without danger as the locals claim it to be. Although Zib and Avery’s companions, the Crow Girl and the Drowning Girl, while they are certainly missing something essentially it’s nothing so straightforward as brains, a heart or even the nerve, nor is it going to be as simple to discover how to get them back.

In the end, this is a story about friendship, and about being true to yourself above all, and about loyalty. It’s also a story about learning that even as a child, the world is neither as safe nor protected as you might want it to be, and that you need to learn to take care of yourself and your choices – with a little bit of help from the friends you find along the way.

Escape Rating B+: A. Deborah Baker is Seanan McGuire writing not so much under a pen name but rather under the name of a character she created in Middlegame. Bits and pieces of the stories in The Up-and Under were introduced in Middlegame as stories written by a character in the book named A. Deborah Baker, all of which serves to explain where this series comes from and why it’s under a new pseudonym for the author who already writes as Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire.

The irony for this reader is that I liked this story – maybe not quite as much as Every Heart a Doorway and Across the Green Grass Fields, but still quite a lot – even though I bounced hard off Middlegame and never went back to it. I’m starting to believe that the answer is that I like this author in smaller chunks, possibly because her style of fairy tale feeling stories for adults works better for me in the shorter form.

While this story reminds me a lot of its antecedents, it’s also different from all of them in a way that feels more interesting and more realistic. Oz and Wonderland both turned out to be dreams rather than reality. Narnia was real, for select definitions of real, but even though the Pevensie children spent decades in Narnia and reached adulthood there, when they returned to the real world they remembered Narnia and all their experiences there BUT they returned to being children as if no time had passed at all. Even odder, they returned seemingly unaffected and unchanged by their decades of extra life experience.

Zib and Avery are changing all the time, and as we learn at the end of the story, real time is passing both for them and for their parents back home. While on the one hand this feels like a fairy tale, on the other it definitely reads like a journey with consequences. Zib and Avery have an important mission to complete in the Up-and-Under, and their experiences in that world have already changed them from who they were – and who they would have become as a result. They already see the world differently, and it feels like those changes are going to have long-term effects, just as the children’s journeys do in Wayward Children.

We’ll certainly have time to find out, as Zib and Avery’s journey in the Up-and-Under continues in Along the Saltwise Sea later this year. They’re going to sail with a pirate queen!

Review: Practical Boots by C.E. Murphy

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Practical Boots by C.E. MurphyPractical Boots (The Torn #1) by C.E. Murphy
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: ebook
Genres: portal fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Torn #1
Pages: 101
Published by Miz Kit Productions on June 4, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

These boots are made for walking...

The disappointing daughter of a Lord of the Torn, Cat Sharp was dumped in the shapeless Waste to prove herself or die. Seven years later, she's honed the Artificer magic that saved her in the Waste, and her courier business is booming: after all, no one else can step from one location to another almost instantaneously, as Cat can with her seven league boots.

Each passage through the Waste takes her one step closer to the only thing she's ever wanted to find...but even the Torn-born become careless at times. When Cat's father catches up with her again, Cat must make a choice between her own dreams and an innocent's future...or try once more to forge her own way through two worlds, neither of which she quite belongs in....

My Review:

The practical boots that Cat Sharp fashioned for herself out of the stuff of the Waste have existed in folklore and fiction for centuries, but in real life, not so much. They’re the “seven-league boots” that have cropped up – or strode across – stories ranging from Jack the Giant Killer to The Innocents Abroad to Howl’s Moving Castle to even trip The Light Fantastic of the Discworld.

But Cat made her own when her aelfen father (they don’t call themselves “elves” thankyouverymuch) tossed her out of the Torn – the fae lands where she was born – into the Waste. The Waste is what lies between the truly magical lands of the Torn and the World – the world that we humans live in.

Cat is neither and both. Her mother was human, her father was Torn, and Cat’s half-and-half nature allows her to be a bit of both but fully a part of neither. When her sperm donor – or whatever it is the aelfen actually have – tossed her aside into the Waste – she made her boots and walked her way into our world.

Where she became a high-priced, highly sought after, highly exclusive courier. Being able to go from New York to LA in one step and the blink of an eye is a lucrative talent in a world where time is all too often literally money.

When the story begins, the courier job that Cat has taken turns out to be a trap that leads directly to her manipulative father. She’s barely finished – even on a temporary basis – dealing with that asshole, when she’s jerked into another trap. Which pushes her right into – you guessed it – a third trap.

Getting out of THAT leads her right back to where this journey began – chasing her sperm donor into yet one more…trap.

But as Cat jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire, we learn what makes her tick, how her walks between the worlds work and even a little bit of just what it is that makes Cat so special that so many people are trying to use her for their own ends.

Or to create the means that they can use for those ends.

All Cat wants to do is stay out of everyone’s clutches – especially her father’s. So she can keep on hunting – for her mom.

Escape Rating B: When I saw Practical Boots on this month’s Must Haves over at The Book Pushers I grabbed it immediately. Because I have fond memories of reading the author’s urban fantasy series, the Walker Papers (start with Urban Shaman) a long time and several cities ago. I still have them.

But when I read Practical Boots I kept having the feeling that I’d read it before – and not in the Walker Papers, as the setups are completely different. Practical Boots just came out, so I can’t have read this before but I have read things that have bits of this plenty of times. The father/daughter relationship is very like the one in House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas – and every bit as manipulative and abusive. The mechanism, the travel between the World, the Torn, and the Waste has echoes of the travel between the worlds in Charlie Stross’ Merchant Princes series.

Practical Boots also feels like it has echoes of other urban fantasy series, like Lindsay Buroker’s Death Before Dragons (start with Sinister Magic), and Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles – particularly Sweep of the Blade as well as Andrews’ Edge series that begins with On the Edge.

And it could just be that this is a portal fantasy, where people move between our world and semi-attached magical realms, and that’s been done many times because it has so much potential for terrific stories.

Practical Boots certainly lives up to that potential, even in the relatively small bite we get of it here. It works – and admittedly for some readers it won’t – because we experience the whole story through Cat Sharp’s very sharp and snarky perspective. We know what she’s thinking, we know what she’s feeling. We also know that she’s an unreliable narrator who lies to herself most of all.

She is stuck in a situation that she’s trying to make herself believe is temporary – but probably isn’t. She’s trying to make sure that her talent serves herself first, her friends and loved ones best, and her enemies as little as possible. But she might not succeed.

Through her eyes and her mind we get enough of a flavor of all of her worlds to understand who she is and what she wants – even if her explanations of how her magic works seem either arbitrary, deceptive, self-serving or all of the above.

Cat is on a quest to find her mother. A quest I suspect is going to take a long time and is not going to end happily. But I do expect her to have plenty of fascinating adventures along the way!

Review: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuireAcross the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6) by Seanan McGuire
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: portal fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Wayward Children #6
Pages: 174
Published by Tordotcom on January 12, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

A young girl discovers a portal to a land filled with centaurs and unicorns in Seanan McGuire's Across the Green Grass Fields, a standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-wining Wayward Children series.
“Welcome to the Hooflands. We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”
Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated, of late.
When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to "Be Sure" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines―a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes.
But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem…

My Review:

Across the Green Grass Fields is the sixth book in the multi-award-winning Wayward Children series. It also seems to be the first book in the series that does not somehow center around Miss West’s Home for Wayward Children.

Not that the ending of this one doesn’t lead the reader to wonder if Regan, the central figure of this particular story, isn’t going to wind up at Miss West’s sometime after the book ends. Not after the story ends, because like the best of stories, this doesn’t feel like it ended so much as it feels like the author has moved her gaze away from Regan onto the next child and more importantly, the next doorway.

If the first book in the series, Every Heart a Doorway, read as post-Narnia, a look at the lives of children much like the Pevensie children AFTER they came back from Narnia and had to adjust to being children and commoners and depressingly normal again. Or whatever normal they each managed to approximate.

Because you have to wonder just how hard that “normal” was to fake. Based on what happens to the children who have come to Miss West’s, that faking is NOT EASY very much in all caps.

But Across the Green Grass Fields is Regan’s story, but not Regan’s story of re-adjustment. Instead, it’s the story of Regan as she finds her own special doorway, the one that leads her to the place her heart calls home.

Regan’s doorway leads to the Hooflands, a place filled with centaurs and unicorns and kelpies and every other kind of mythical creature that has hooves – with or without unicorn horns. The Hooflands are Regan’s special place because Regan, like many young girls, loves horses.

But the reason that the doorway between our world and the Hooflands has opened at all is because the Hooflands need a human at this moment in their history as much as Regan wants a place to escape to.

The Hooflands need a human to rescue them from something terrible, even if the centaur herd that adopts Regan doesn’t yet know what that terrible something is. And Regan needs time to come to terms with being, not so much perfect in itself as no human is perfect, but with being perfectly Regan – no matter what anyone else, not even her ultra-conformist and uber-bitchy former best friend has to say about it.

Escape Rating A: One of the things that the beginning of this story conveys extremely well is just how vicious and cutthroat playground “politics” can be among grade school children – especially girls. And just how parents seem to forget that fact when they reach adulthood.

I know that’s a strange place to start but then this was a bit of a strange book at the start for me. I loved it but also found the opening a bit hard of a read. When Regan first learns just how truly vicious her best friend Laurel can be, after Laurel rejects and ostracizes their former friend Heather for violating Laurel’s rigid rules about what constitutes girlhood, I was right there for all of it. I was a Heather, someone who colored outside those lines when I was 5 or 6 and spent the following years in virtual isolation because there was a Queen Bee just like Laurel who determined that I was less than nothing and enforced that over the whole playground and classroom. And I know I’m not the only person who went through that experience. It happens, it happens a lot and it still happens as this book clearly shows.

So that part was so hard and so real.

We can all see Regan’s coming falling out – or rather her being pushed away – from Laurel long before it does. There’s already a part of her that wants to do more things and different things from her controlling “best friend”, an impulse that’s only going to get stronger as the girls get older and develop separate interests.

But puberty arrives first, and brings Regan’s world crashing down. Because in the competitive race to maturity among those little girls, Regan is not merely losing, but is being left behind. And every one of those little girls makes her feel it.

When Regan learns that she is intersex, it answers her questions but leaves her feeling deceived by her parents – they’ve always known that she had XY chromosomes instead of the expected XX – and needing to vent to her best friend about the injustice of it all.

Only to face utter, humiliating rejection. Followed by that desperate run towards the door that will take her to the Hooflands, a place where she’ll be the only human anyone has ever seen. Where she’ll have time to deal with her feelings about being different from other humans without having to deal with other humans.

At least not until she has to meet her destiny and save the Hooflands.

There’s so much that ends up packed into this story. And all of it ends up being pretty much awesome.

On the one hand – or hoof – there’s Regan who, in spite of her constant trying is not going to be able to shoehorn herself into Laurel’s tiny box of girlhood. A fact that actually has little to do with chromosomes and everything to do with Laurel’s box in specific and society’s box in general being too tight and too constraining and too restrictive to fit lots of humans who are born female or appear female – and for that matter lots of humans who are born male or appear male. Strict gender roles are a straitjacket for everyone.

On top of that – or on another hoof – in addition to the whole concept about gender being destiny being complete BS – while Regan is in the Hooflands she also has to deal with the local concept of species being destiny. Or at least the local myths, legends and history that all say that a human comes through a door because the Hooflands needs someone to fight some great evil. And that the fight with evil somehow requires not just opposable but downright flexible thumbs.

Regan, being the human who has just walked through their door, is therefore destined to save the Hooflands and then leave everyone she has come to love behind. Whether she wants to or not.

It’s not just that species is destiny with a capital D. Regan is still a child. Even if the local people – and they are all people who just happen to have hooves instead of or in addition to hands – believe she must save them from whatever, Regan knows she’s not ready to save anyone, at least not yet.

Very much like the young protagonist of the utterly awesome A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, Regan can’t help but question why the hell the adults in the Hooflands are not taking matters into their own hooves and hands and saving themselves. It should not be up to her just because she’s human. It should be up to them, not just because it’s their world but because dammit they are GROWNUPS!

On top of, and underneath and woven all through, there’s an adventure story about a girl who loves horses getting to live in a place that’s all horses all the time. She gets to find a family and become part of a community and discover the best of friendship and the worst of people all at the same time. And it’s lovely.

It also makes Regan’s ultimate sacrifice all that much more heartbreaking.

Excuse me, there seems to be a bit of dust in this post.

Review: The World Awakening by Dan Koboldt + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> Blogo-Birthday> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: The World Awakening by Dan Koboldt + GiveawayThe World Awakening by Dan Koboldt
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Gateways to Alissia #3
Pages: 448
Published by Harper Voyager Impulse on April 3rd 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Quinn Bradley has learned to use the magic of another world.

And that world is in danger.

Having decided to betray CASE Global, he can finally reveal his origins to the Enclave and warn them about the company’s imminent invasion. Even if it means alienating Jillaine . . . and allying with someone he’s always considered his adversary. 

But war makes for strange bedfellows, and uniting Alissians against such a powerful enemy will require ancient enmities—as well as more recent antagonisms—to be set aside. The future of their pristine world depends on it.

As Quinn searches for a way to turn the tide, his former CASE Global squadmates face difficult decisions of their own. For some, it’s a matter of what they’re willing to do to get home. For others, it’s deciding whether they want to go home at all.Continuing the exciting adventures from The Rogue Retrieval and The Island Deception, The World Awakening is the spellbinding conclusion to the Gateways to Alissia fantasy series from Dan Koboldt.

My Review:

Now that we are at the third book of the trilogy, I still see the Gateways to Alissia as a blend of S.M. Stirling’s Conquistador with L.E. Modesitt’s Imager Portfolio. And as far as I’m concerned, those are marvelous places to start. I probably read Conquistador at least ten years ago, and it still sticks in my memory, while the Imager Portfolio is one of my favorite epic fantasy series and I’m happy to say that it is still ongoing and still fantastic.

Both Gateways to Alissia and Conquistador are a particular type of epic fantasy – the portal fantasy. In both cases, there is a literal portal that connects our world to the fantasy world, in this case, Alissia. And for those who are currently watching the TV series The Magicians, based on Lev Grossman’s book of the same title, let’s just say there’s more than a bit of a resemblance between Fillory and Alissia, even if there is no magical college on our side of the gate.

The two mega-corporations on Earth that are aware of the portal both see Alissia as an unspoiled and undeveloped world just waiting to be plundered by the oh-so-beneficent technocrats on Earth. And it might happen. It’s certainly in danger of happening.

But the story in The World Awakening is the story of Alissia fighting back – with more than a bit of help from a surprising number of people from our Earth who are not willing to stand idly by while Alissia gets raped and plundered. No matter what it takes to stop CASE Global and Raptor Tech from conquering Alissia with what they are certain are superior armaments.

But like all conquerors since time immemorial – the further the supply lines are stretched, the easier it is to break them.

And Alissia isn’t nearly as outmatched as they thought – with a little help from its friends – no matter what they might think of each other.

Escape Rating A-: The World Awakening is a marvelous conclusion to this trilogy, and as the concluding volume it is very much the wrong place to start. If you like portal fantasy, or stories of people from our Earth finding themselves in places where magic works, or even just want a rollicking good story, start with the first book, The Rogue Retrieval, where you can be introduced to our trouble-magnet anti-hero, the stage magician Quinn Bradley, as he comes to Alissia to discover that magic is real after all, and that he can perform it – and not merely perform.

By this point in the story, we have seen the team that Quinn originally trained with flung to the four corners of Alissia, and we have watched their perspectives change and their allegiances shift, particularly in the case of Quinn himself.

He’s come a long way from the reluctantly recruited stage magician. I’m still not totally sure he’s grown up, but his horizons have certainly expanded, as has is view of both Alissia and Earth. His transformation is a big chunk of what drives the story, and his expanding viewpoint pulls the reader along with him.

But Gateways to Alissia is a big story with a lot of players and a lot going on. I envy those of you who will begin the story now, when it is complete. It has been a year since I read the second book in the saga, The Island Deception, and it takes a bit for the reader to get back up to speed. It’s certainly well worth that effort. The World Awakening is a terrific story, and it brings the saga of Alissia to a fantastic, resounding and satisfying conclusion. And I enjoyed every step of the journey – although I’m happy not to have had to trudge through the snow myself!

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

In honor of my Blogo-Birthday celebration, and because I’ve enjoyed this series so very much, the author, Dan Koboldt is sponsoring today’s giveaway. Three winners will receive a paperback copy of their choice of book in the Gateways to Alissia trilogy. Newcomers should choose The Rogue Retrieval, but if you have already begun your journey, please pick up where you left off, with either The Island Deception or this final volume, The World Awakening.

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Review: The Island Deception by Dan Koboldt + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> Blogo-Birthday> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: The Island Deception by Dan Koboldt + GiveawayThe Island Deception by Dan Koboldt
Formats available: ebook
Series: Gateways to Alissia #2
Pages: 352
Published by Harper Voyager Impulse on April 11th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. But what happens after you step through a portal to another world, well…
For stage magician Quinn Bradley, he thought his time in Alissia was over. He’d done his job for the mysterious company CASE Global Enterprises, and now his name is finally on the marquee of one of the biggest Vegas casinos. And yet, for all the accolades, he definitely feels something is missing. He can create the most amazing illusions on Earth, but he’s also tasted true power. Real magic.
He misses it.
Luckily—or not—CASE Global is not done with him, and they want him to go back. The first time, he was tasked with finding a missing researcher. Now, though, he has another task:
Help take Richard Holt down.
It’s impossible to be in Vegas and not be a gambler. And while Quinn might not like his odds—a wyvern nearly ate him the last time he was in Alissia—if he plays his cards right, he might be able to aid his friends.

I loved last year’s The Rogue Retrieval, and when I finished it I found myself desperately hoping for a sequel that did not appear to be on the horizon. So when the author contacted me to request a review of that sequel I was hoping for but not expecting, I was all in.

Then I looked at the publication date and realized that introducing others to this world would make a perfect Blogo-Birthday giveaway, and the author and publisher graciously agreed. So first you’ll read a bit about what I loved about The Island Deception and the marvelous world of Alissia, and then you’ll have a chance to win a paperback of The Rogue Retrieval or ebooks of both The Rogue Retrieval and The Island Deception.

But first, my review…

The series title gives just a bit away. The Island Deception is the second book in the Gateways to Alissia, and that’s what this series is, gateway or portal fantasy. There is a gateway, or portal, between our post-industrial, non-magical world and pristine Alissia, which is seems to be just pre-industrial, (our 1600s or 1700s) and definitely magical.

Not just magical in the sense that everyone who travels through the gateway falls in love with the place and wants to stay, but also magical in the sense that magic works.

That’s where our hero comes in. Or came in for The Rogue Retrieval. Quinn Bradley is a stage magician in our world, who discovers in Alissia that the part he has been playing as a magician is surprisingly real. He may be a very late bloomer, but it looks like he might be a real mage. At least on Alissia.

He’s determined to get back there and find out. So when he gets called back to the gateway, this time he’s more than happy to go.

And CASE Global still needs him, because that rogue agent his group was supposed to retrieve in the the first book is still out there, and is gathering power at an astonishing rate. CASE Global’s original concern was that Richard Holt would reveal the existence of advanced technology, and contaminate the world they were studying.

Now it looks like he’s planning to do much more than that. It looks very like he has seized political control in Alissia for the express purpose of preventing CASE Global (and their competitor Raptor Tech) from using their advanced tech to take over Alissia and milk its resources for their own ends.

Or just fight over it until there’s nothing left to save. It doesn’t seem to matter to either of them. But it matters to Richard Holt quite a lot. And, as it turns out, to Quinn Bradley as well.

It looks like it’s time for everyone to decide whether someone else’s bad ends justify their own participation in horrible means, and figure out where their true loyalties lay.

Before it’s too late.

Escape Rating A-: I gave The Rogue Retrieval a B+, because as much as I really enjoyed the ride, the antecedents felt just a bit too clear for me to push it into the A’s. The Island Deception has done a much better job of melding its predecessors into a thing of its own. If you like any of what came before, you’ll like this too, but it also feels more like its own “whole” and not just the sum of its parts.

There’s still a lot of S.M. Stirling’s Conquistador in Alissia, but there are also significant differences. The high-tech world, our world, finds the less developed world in a much more primitive state than happens in Alissia. And the presence of people from the high-tech world is much more exploitative from the outset. It ends up being a place where exiles from our world go to practice deliberately exploitative forms of governance that have been overtly consigned to not the dustbin of history, but the garbage dumpster of history, here. Things like slavery. And apartheid. And the complete subjugation of women, natives, non-Christians and pretty much anyone with brown skin. Or any other color of skin than white.

Alissia, at least for most of our interaction with it, has been left alone to continue its native development, while it gets studied in depth by our world. That appears to be about to change, and could have been predicted to change from the very beginning, but it hasn’t happened yet, and could still be prevented.

The parallels between Alissia and L.E. Modesitt’s Imager Portfolio are much clearer in this book, particularly between the magician’s island on Alissia, The Enclave, and the Imager Collegium as portrayed in the latest Imager trilogy, beginning with Madness in Solidar. Alastor’s dilemma at the Collegium is very much the same as that of the head of The Enclave in Alissia. How does one provide a safe haven for a small but powerful population of magic users in a world where they are vastly outnumbered by mundanes who often fear or envy their powers? Is alliance with the powers that be safer than strict neutrality? And if so, what happens when the powers that be change their course? There are no easy answers, and Quinn Bradley finds himself caught in the middle between his desire to learn magic and his desire to protect his friends and comrades on both sides of the gateway.

Although there are other members of the team, the story rests on Quinn. Even though there are points where the action follows others and he is not present, it is his perspective that we return to, and his character that we know best – at least to the degree that Quinn knows himself. Quinn himself is a bit of a rogue, always sure that his glib tongue can get him out of any trouble. It’s only when both his glibness and his technology fail him that he is able to finally reach inside himself and find out what he is really made of.

But if you like your heroes touched with a spark (or snark) of anti-hero, Quinn is a gem. Whether he’s real or paste is anybody’s guess – sometimes even his own. I can’t wait to discover how Quinn’s adventure plays out (hopefully in The World Awakening next year), whichever side he decides he’s on.

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

rogue retrieval by dan koboldt
island deception by dan koboldt

And now for that giveaway. Dan and Harper Voyager are letting me give away the winner’s choice of a paperback of The Rogue Retrieval or ebook copies of both The Rogue Retrieval and The Island Deception (Island isn’t out in paperback yet!). So it’s your choice whether you want to whet your appetite with that paperback or get caught up on all the action in Alissia with ebooks of both. Enjoy the ride!

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Review: Battlestorm by Susan Krinard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C+ Reviews
Review: Battlestorm by Susan KrinardBattlestorm (Midgard, #3) by Susan Krinard
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Midgard #3
Pages: 480
Published by Tor Books on March 29th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The third installment in New York Times bestselling author Susan Krinard’s first urban fantasy series...
Centuries ago, the Norse gods and goddesses fought their Last Battle with the trickster god Loki and his frost giants. All were believed lost, except for a few survivors…including the Valkyrie Mist, forgotten daughter of the goddess Freya.
But the battle isn’t over, and Mist—living a mortal life in San Francisco—is at the center of a new war, with the fate of earth hanging in the balance. As old enemies and allies reappear around the city, Mist must determine who to trust, all while learning to control her own growing power.
It will take all of Mist’s courage, determination, and newfound magical abilities to stop Loki before history repeats itself.

My Review:

This is one of those stories where it isn’t so much that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” or even “the enemy of my enemy is my ally” but rather “the enemy of my enemy is someone else I can betray sooner or later, probably sooner.”

It feels like Battlestorm is the bastard child of American Gods and Babylon 5, and I’m still not sure whether I mean that in a good way or not.

Just as in American Gods, the primary movers and shakers of the story are gods from the Norse pantheon, Odin, Loki, and for added spice and betrayal, Freya. This is also as complex and dense a story as American Gods, without having any of its lighter moments. Battlestorm is Ragnarök moved to Midgard, meaning our present-day Earth, with all the possibilities for the end of the world as we know it that the idea of Ragnarök implies.

American Gods was much lighter in comparison, and that’s saying something.

Mist by Susan KrinardLike the long story arc of Babylon 5, the story began in Mist and continued in Black Ice has the feel of a long-anticipated and often repeated battle between Good and Evil. However, just as in Babylon 5, now that the forces of Good have revealed themselves in Odin, the contest is nowhere near that clear cut. Instead, we have a battle between the forces of Order and Chaos. Loki represents the forces of Chaos, and he desires a world where all law and order is eliminated, and only the strongest and most ruthless survive. On that infamous other hand, Odin represents Order. But Order with a capital O is not necessarily good. Odin is a force for the tyranny of order, a world where he will be the absolute ruler and utter dictator, and humanity can only exist in a state of blind obedience.

Poor Mist is caught in the middle. She wants to protect the people of Midgard, among whom she has lived for centuries. She believes that humanity should be left to determine its own path, without interference from her gods. But as a Valkyrie, Odin commands her obedience. And Loki holds those she loves captive.

Mist is going to have to betray someone in order to protect those she holds dear. Including the entire human race.

Escape Rating C+: If the concept of the Norse gods coming to contemporary earth to enact their final battle, or anything else, appeals to you, start this series at the beginning, with Mist. The three book series, Mist, Black Ice and now Battlestorm, is one long saga (how fitting!) and must be read in order to make any sense at all.

That being said, I personally think the whole thing probably works better if you can manage to read the whole thing not just in order but also close together. There are so many players in this story, so many wheels within wheels, that it feels impossible to remember who is betraying whom, and why, a year after the previous book. For those readers who, like me, read the books as they came out, I sincerely hope that the finished copy includes a synopsis of previous events. The ARC I read did not, and I really needed one.

A primer on the Norse pantheon probably wouldn’t hurt either, particularly focused on who is related to whom. Loki had a surprising number of powerful and interesting children, who all have agendas of their own, and do not always obey their father. But then, Odin has that problem with his kids as well. In Battlestorm, Loki’s personality and his relationship with his father feel like they owe a lot to Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I found Battlestorm to be dense. It took me twice as long to read it as I expected, because I kept needing to step away and digest what had just happened – meaning what had just gone wrong. Mist never catches a break. She also seems to always be the last person in the universe to find out or be told information that is crucial to her fight and even to her very existence. There are a few too many instances where someone is just about to tell her something she desperately needs to know – only to be interrupted and the opportunity disappear for days and pages. For the daughter of a goddess, Mist seems woefully, or deliberately, misinformed about damn near everything all of the time.

This is the part that reminded me most of American Gods. Not just the Norse pantheon, but Mist’s position is a lot like Shadow’s. She has been created for a purpose that she has no clues about, but is led around by the nose by beings who are much better informed than she is and who are deliberately keeping her in the dark. And in the end, very little is as it originally seemed, to her or to the reader. Also like Shadow.

black ice by susan krinardFor anyone who has read my reviews of Mist and Black Ice, I was dead wrong about Orn’s identity. The true identity of the parrot becomes totally clear very early in Battlestorm. Just call him Mr. Wednesday.

If some of the description of and comments about Battlestorm appeal, try American Gods. It is positively awesome, where Battlestorm has both its moments and its moments of frustration. If the idea of evil being good and good being evil sounds interesting, try Banewreacker and Godslayer by Jacqueline Carey, which explore the same themes.

In the end, I was glad I finished Battlestorm and saw the story begun in Mist and Black Ice come to at least some resolution.

Review: The Rogue Retrieval by Dan Koboldt

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Rogue Retrieval by Dan KoboldtThe Rogue Retrieval by Dan Koboldt
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Gateways to Alissia #1
Pages: 384
Published by Harper Voyager Impulse on January 19th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Sleight of hand…in another land.
Stage magician Quinn Bradley has one dream: to headline his own show on the Vegas Strip. And with talent scouts in the audience wowed by his latest performance, he knows he’s about to make the big-time. What he doesn’t expect is an offer to go on a quest to a place where magic is all too real.
That's how he finds himself in Alissia, a world connected to ours by a secret portal owned by a powerful corporation. He’s after an employee who has gone rogue, and that’s the least of his problems. Alissia has true magicians…and the penalty for impersonating one is death. In a world where even a twelve-year-old could beat Quinn in a swordfight, it's only a matter of time until the tricks up his sleeves run out.
Scientist and blogger Dan Koboldt weaves wonder, humor, and heart into his debut novel, The Rogue Retrieval. Fans of Terry Brooks and Terry Pratchett will find this a thrilling read.

My Review:

The Rogue Retrieval is a terrific example of what is called “portal fantasy”, where a magical portal opens between our world of the mundane and another world where magic is operational.

Admittedly, the magic of the portal itself may be of the Arthur C. Clarke variety, where “any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic” as it may be in this case. Or it can literally be a magic portal, like the famous wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series.

So there is a viewpoint where The Rogue Retrieval can be considered Narnia for adults. Without Aslan.

In the case of The Rogue Retrieval, the portal is a literal portal between our world and the world of Alissia, where not only does magic work but where the human population is not as technologically advanced as in our world. It feels like late Renaissance or very early Industrial Age, maybe the technological equivalent of our late 1700s and early 1800s, but that is totally opinion. It might be our 1600s, but it isn’t any later than the 1800s as the industrial pollution produced in copious amounts in our Industrial era is not present.

And of course the pristine nature of Alissia, along with the seeming lack of sophistication of its inhabitants, is part of its “charm” to two rival corporations; CASE Global and Raptor Tech.

CASE Global controls the portal, and they have a problem. One of their anthropologists has gone missing, along with a backpack full of advanced tech that is not supposed to be taken to Alissia. In other words, they have a rogue agent who has violated the equivalent of the Prime Directive.

And that’s kind of where our hero and point of view character Quinn Bradley comes in. Quinn is a stage magician, and a pretty good one. He’s just about to get his big break when CASE Global intervenes, and threatens him with economic ruin and bodily harm if he doesn’t come to work for them.

These are not nice people. They threaten Quinn’s life and future, and that of pretty much every person he is in contact with; his friends, his business associates, his remaining family, the population of his hometown. The iron hand in the velvet glove is so literal that its adamantium claws stick out of the glove.

Of course Quinn goes along. He has no choice. But he is also looking forward to the adventure, even if the information he is provided with is woefully scanty in its details. He’s not so much in it for the quest as for the experience. For the stage magician, Alissia represents a whole new audience.

With one big catch. On Alissia, magic is real. And magic practitioners are even more jealous of their rights than Quinn’s Vegas competition. Pretending to be a mage is a death sentence on Alissia, and those “nice” folks at CASE Global know that they are potentially throwing Quinn under the bus (or carriage) if he’s caught.

Unless the stage wizard turns out to be a real magician after all.

Escape Rating B+: I really liked this story, but the antecedents were just a bit too obvious to make it an A. It is, however, a wild and very fun ride from beginning to end.

The story in The Rogue Retrieval reminded me of three different books, all of which I loved very much, but which combine here into a whole that so far works well. It will be interesting to see how the issues get resolved in the future stories that I really hope are coming. Quinn Bradley’s story definitely isn’t over.

When I first read the premise for this story, it looked like a mirror image of Dark Magic by James Swain (reviewed here). In that story, the protagonist is a stage magician on our world who uses his identity as a master illusionist to conceal his very real identity as a practicing wizard.

But as I got into the story the one that it reminded me of most strongly is S.M. Stirling’s Conquistador. Also a bit of Charles Stross’ Merchant Princes series, but mostly Conquistador. In Conquistador, a portal is discovered between our world and an alternate version of our world that is several centuries removed in the past. In the world of Conquistador, the contemporary discovers find themselves in America before the colonial empires, and set themselves up literally as conquistadors, conquering the world with advanced technology, enslaving the natives, and exploiting the natural resources.

While that hasn’t happened YET in The Rogue Retrieval, there are all kinds of glaring and blaring signs that it is the direction that the rival corporations are headed, and possibly that the reason their agent went rogue was to get himself in a position to prevent the rape of Alissia, or at least provide it with ways to fight back.

The third part of the story reminded me of L.E. Modesitt’s first Imager book. In that story, a grownup discovers that he is a mage, and has to learn how to master both his powers and the drastic change in his life. At the same time, he is attending classes with children, and having to unlearn the life he knew. But he brings his adult experience and expectations to the table. In both cases, the protagonist is still young and flexible enough to learn, but too mature to indoctrinate. (There’s a reason that the Armed Forces like to recruit 18-year-olds!)

Throw those elements into a classic portal-fantasy quest, and you have The Rogue Retrieval. A relatively young man discovers he is a real mage, long after anyone believes that could be possible. A new and pristine world is ripe for the plucking, and forces are arrayed to begin to pluck, with all of the attendant evils of colonialism lined up to march over the place.

And that rogue agent who started it all is still out there, positioned much, much more strategically than anyone expected.

The next book in this series (oh please let there be a next book!) is set up to be marvelous.