Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley

Review: Like Thunder by Nnedi Okorafor

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Review: Like Thunder by Nnedi OkoraforLike Thunder (The Desert Magician's Duology #2) by Nnedi Okorafor
Narrator: Délé Ogundiran
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: African Futurism, climate fiction, fantasy, science fiction
Series: Desert Magician's Duology #2
Pages: 336
Length: 10 hours and 23 minutes
Published by DAW, Tantor Audio on November 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This brand-new sequel to Nnedi Okorafor’s Shadow Speaker contains the powerful prose and compelling stories that have made Nnedi Okorafor a star of the literary science fiction and fantasy space and put her at the forefront of Africanfuturist fiction
Niger, West Africa, 2077
Welcome back. This second volume is a breathtaking story that sweeps across the sands of the Sahara, flies up to the peaks of the Aïr Mountains, cartwheels into a wild megacity—you get the idea.
I am the Desert Magician; I bring water where there is none.
This book begins with Dikéogu Obidimkpa slowly losing his mind. Yes, that boy who can bring rain just by thinking about it is having some…issues. Years ago, Dikéogu went on an epic journey to save Earth with the shadow speaker girl, Ejii Ubaid, who became his best friend. When it was all over, they went their separate ways, but now he’s learned their quest never really ended at all.
So Dikéogu, more powerful than ever, reunites with Ejii. He records this story as an audiofile, hoping it will help him keep his sanity or at least give him something to leave behind. Smart kid, but it won’t work—or will it?
I can tell you it won’t be like before. Our rainmaker and shadow speaker have changed. And after this, nothing will ever be the same again.
As they say, ‘ Onye amaro ebe nmili si bido mabaya ama ama onye nyelu ya akwa oji welu ficha aru .’
Or, ‘If you do not remember where the rain started to beat you, you will not remember who gave you the towel with which to dry your body.’

My Review:

Like Thunder is the second half of the Desert Magician’s Duology, and the follow-up to the utterly excellent Shadow Speaker. Like that first book, Like Thunder is a story within a story, as the whole duology is a tale of a possible future, and a lesson to be learned, told by the Desert Magician himself.

But it is not the Desert Magician’s story, no matter how much that being meddled with the characters and the events that they faced. Just as Shadow Speaker was the story of Eiji Ugabe, the titular shadow speaker herself, Like Thunder represents her best friend Dikéogu Obidimkpa’s side of the events that followed.

Shadow speaking is but one of the many transformations and strange, new powers brought into this world after the ‘peace bombs’ were dropped and the oncoming nuclear catastrophe was transformed into something survivable for the human population.

A survival that seems to be more contingent on the adaptability of not just the humans of Earth, but also the sentient populations of ALL the worlds that have become interconnected after Earth’s ‘Great Change’ caused a ‘Great Merge’ of several formerly separated worlds.

The story in Shadow Speaker very much represented Eiji’s perspective on the world, as Eiji’s first impulse is always to talk, and to listen. An impulse that combines her youthful belief that people CAN be better if given the opportunity, and is likely a result of her talent for speaking with not just the shadows of the dead, but directly into the minds of other people and animals.

Her talent is to see others’ points of view and to project her own. She’s young enough to believe that if there is understanding, there can be peace.

Like Thunder is not Eiji’s story, and it shouldn’t be. Instead, it’s a kind of mirror image. Just as Eiji’s talent leads her to foster peace and understanding, her friend Dikéogu’s talent is violent. Dikéogu is a stormbringer, someone who brings all of the violence of nature and all of the violence visited upon him in his scarred past to every encounter with his friends, with his enemies, and with his world.

And within himself.

The world through which we follow Dikéogu in this concluding volume of the Desert Magician’s Duology is the direct result of Eiji’s peacemaking in her book. Because, unfortunately for the world but fortunate for the reader enthralled with their story, Eiji didn’t really make peace because peace is not what most of the people present for the so-called ‘peace conference’ had any desire for whatsoever.

And have been maneuvering in the background to ensure that the only peace that results in the end is the peace of the grave. Someone is going to have to die. Too many people already have. It’s only a question of whether Dikéogu and Eiji’s feared and reviled powers will save the world – or end it.

Escape Rating A-: As much as I loved Shadow Speaker, I came into this second book with some doubts and quibbles – all of which were marvelously dashed to the ground at the very beginning of Dikéogu’s story.

Eiji and Dikéogu were both very young when their adventure began, but by the time they met they had both already seen enough hardship and disaster to fill a whole lifetime for someone else. But Eiji was just a touch older than Dikéogu, and the differences between her fourteen and his thirteen mattered a lot in terms of maturity.

In other words, Eiji was definitely on the cusp of adulthood in her book, making adult decisions with huge, literally world-shaking consequences, while Dikéogu frequently came off as a whiny little shit, an impression not helped AT ALL by the higher pitched voice used by the narrator for his character.

Dikéogu had PLENTY of reasons for his hatreds and his fears – but that doesn’t mean that they were much more enjoyable to listen to than they were to experience. Less traumatic, certainly, but awful in an entirely different way.

But Like Thunder takes place AFTER the events of Shadow Speaker. (This is also a hint that neither book stands on its own) Whiny thirteen becomes traumatized fifteen with more experience, a bit more closure for some of the worst parts, a bit more distance from terrible betrayals – and his voice drops. (This last bit, of course, doesn’t matter if you’re reading the text and hearing your own voice in your head, but matters a lot in audio.)

Dikéogu’s life experience, particularly after he was sold into slavery by his own uncle at the age of twelve, have taught him that the world is pain and strife and that he has to defend himself at all times and that people will believe ANYTHING if it allows them to stay comfortable and maintain their illusions and their prejudices.

He learned that last bit from his parents, Felecia and Chika Obidimkpa, the power couple of THE West African multimedia empire. They betrayed him into slavery, they betrayed him by pretending he was dead, they betray him every single time they broadcast a program filled with ridiculous nostalgia for a past that never was and disallows and disavows Dikéogu’s existence as a stormbringer, a ‘Changed One’ with powers granted by the ‘Great Change’ they hate so much.

It’s no surprise that his parents are in league with his enemies.

What is a surprise, especially to Dikéogu, is how much of his story, how much of his trauma and how many of his tragedies, are directly traceable to that first betrayal AND his inability to deal with its consequences to himself and the magic he carries.

So, very much on the one hand, Like Thunder is a save the world quest with a surprising twist at its end. A twist at least partly manufactured, and certainly cackled over, by the Desert Magician. And absolutely on the other hand, it’s a story about a young man learning to live with the person he has become – and very nearly failing the test. ALL the tests.

Whichever way you look at it, it is compelling and captivating from the first page – or from the opening words – until the very last line of the Desert Magician congratulating themself on a tale well told and a heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful message delivered.

Review: Fall by Tracy Clark

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A++ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Fall by Tracy ClarkFall (Detective Harriet Foster #2) by Tracy Clark
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Detective Harriet Foster #2
Pages: 347
Published by Thomas & Mercer on December 5, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Seven of Infinities by Aliette de BodardSeven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction mystery
Series: Universe of Xuya
Pages: 176
Published by Subterranean Press on October 31, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student.
Sunless Woods is a mindship—and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She’s come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân’s resolute integrity.
When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân’s student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship--and to the devastating secrets they’ve kept from each other.

My Review:

This entry in the Universe of Xuya begins as a murder and a whole bunch of mysteries – not all of which are wrapped around the murder. Although, more are than first appears – which is true for the whole marvelous thing. There’s way more under every single surface than the characters initially believe. Still, it all begins when Student Uyên admits a forceful woman into her rooms, goes to make tea because she’s been taught to be a good hostess, and returns to find that her unidentified guest is dead on the floor.

Uyên may be on the cusp of adulthood, but she definitely needs a MUCH adultier adult to help her figure out this mess, so she calls for her teacher, Vân. Who, fortunately for them both, is in the midst of a discussion with her friend and fellow scholar, the mindship Sunless Woods. And an extremely fortunate happenstance for Vân, Uyên, and very much to her own surprise, Sunless Woods.

Van has secrets she can’t afford to have revealed. Sunless Woods has grown tireder and more BORED than she imagined keeping her own. While Uyên is in danger of being caught in the midst of a militia investigation designed to provide a guilty party for trial whether or not the party is guilty or not. Which Uyên, at the very least, most definitely is not.

Not that THAT little fact has ever stopped such an interrogation. After all, under enough torture, even the innocent will,  sooner or later, confess to something, as Vân knows all too well.

Except that Vân really was guilty of the crime her best friends were executed for. It just wasn’t murder. And they weren’t innocent either. Then again, they also weren’t executed – at least not until the levers of justice finally ground one of them under and deposited the body in her student’s rooms.

Not that Vân knows that, yet. Not that much of what Vân thinks she knows is remotely still true. Not the identity of that first corpse, not the reason her former friends have come hunting, and not an inkling of the true nature of the prize that they seek.

All Vân is certain of is that she and her student are in deep, deep, trouble, so she reluctantly reaches out to her only real friend, the mind ship Sunless Woods. Only to discover that she had even less idea about the secrets that her friend was keeping than even the mind ship had fathomed about her own.

Escape Rating A-: I had heard of the author’s vast, sprawling Universe of Xuya and was always intrigued by its loosely connected galaxy of short stories and novellas, but didn’t get the round tuit to actually pick it up somewhere in its vastness until The Tea Master and the Detective was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula a few years ago and won the Nebula. That particular entry in the series was a great hook for this reader, as it is a science fiction mystery, a reimagining of Holmes and Watson as mind ships(!) and just a cracking good story all the way around.

So I kept my eye out for more entries in the series that were long enough to warrant separate publication, and therefore had a chance of eARCs. Which is rarer than one might think as most entries in this series are short stories that have been published in pretty much every SFF short fiction publication extant. They’ve not been collected, at least not yet, although I hope that happens.

Which led me, admittedly in a bit of a roundabout way, to Seven of Infinites, which I only remembered to unearth from the virtually towering TBR pile because the eARC of a new book in the Universe of Xuya popped up on NetGalley and I remembered I had this.

It turned out to be the right book at the right time, which is always lovely.

The Universe of Xuya, with its alternate Earth history deep in its background and its sentient population of both humans and mind ships – and possibly other species I haven’t’ met yet, puts together three things I wouldn’t have expected in the same ‘verse.

Which is a bit of a hint, because the leg of the trousers of time that produced the Universe of Xuya seems adjacent to Firefly’s deep background. It’s a history where the U.S. did not emerge as a world superpower and China has a much larger place on the pre-diaspora world’s stage.

As did Mexico, and that combination of cultural influences leads by a slightly more circuitous route to a culture that carries some resonances from Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan in A Memory Called Empire, particular with its lyrical language and long story-filled names and titles and the way it centers and preserves its traditions over everyone else’s through implanted memories. .

But the central question of this universe as a whole is one that is asked often in SF, and is one of the central points of Ann Leckie’s short story Lake of Souls, coming in the collection of the same name next spring.

It’s the question of what, exactly, are ‘people’? Not what are humans, because that’s a relatively easy question – or at least it can be. But what makes a human – or a member of another species, even one from another planet or another origin story – people? Is it sentience? Is it sapience? Does it require physicality? Does it require that physicality in the same way that humans manifest it?

In the Universe of Xuya, mind ships are people. No more and no less, albeit more differently, than humans are. Society, built on big ships and small space stations out in the black of space, is made to contain both, together and separately.

At the heart of Seven of Infinities is a story about the privileges of power to perpetuate itself, the ties that bind teacher and student in true respect and scholarship, the importance of having old and dear friends who will be there for you when you need to bury a body – even if its your own – and the sure and certain knowledge that the heart wants what the heart wants, whether the heart is made of blood and tissue or wires and circuits.

I came for the mystery, stayed for the world and universe building, and fell surprisingly hard for the romance at its heart. I’ll be back the next time I’m looking for heartbreaking, lyrical, captivating SF. Or for Navigational Entanglements next year, whichever comes first.

Review: Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Valdemar by Mercedes LackeyValdemar (The Founding of Valdemar #3) by Mercedes Lackey
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: The Founding of Valdemar #3, Valdemar (Publication order) #58, Valdemar (Chronological) #6
Pages: 368
Published by DAW on December 26, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The long-awaited story of the founding of Valdemar comes to life in this 3rd book of a trilogy from a New York Times bestselling author and beloved fantasist.
The refugees from the Empire have established a thriving city called Haven with the help of the Tayledras and their allies. But the Tayledras have begun a slow withdrawal to the dangerous lands known as the Pelagirs, leaving the humans of Haven to find their own way.
But even with Haven settled, the lands around Haven are not without danger. Most of the danger comes in the form of magicians: magicians taking advantage of the abundant magical energy in the lands the Tayledras have cleansed; magicians who have no compunction about allying themselves with dark powers and enslaving magical beasts and the Elementals themselves.
Kordas, his family, and his people will need all the help they can get. But when a prayer to every god he has ever heard of brings Kordas a very specific and unexpected form of help, the new kingdom of Valdemar is set on a path like nothing else the world has ever seen.
Perfect for longtime fans of Valdemar or readers diving into the world for the first time, the Founding of Valdemar trilogy will delight and enchant readers with the origin story of this beloved fantasy realm.

My Review:

This final book in the Founding of Valdemar trilogy is the one that every fan of the series, both new and old, has been waiting for, not just since the first book in this trilogy, Beyond, came out in 2021, but frankly since the very first book in the very first series, Arrows of the Queen, was published back in 1987.

Because we finally get to see the advent of the beautiful, intelligent, beacons of light and conscience that have kept Valdemar the marvelous and marvelously liveable country it has been since that first book nearly 40 years ago.

It wouldn’t be Valdemar without the Companions, and it wouldn’t have been fair to title this book Valdemar unless it really was Valdemar as it should be. Fair however is very fair indeed, and Kordas Valdemar’s prayers (and ours), are answered.

That the Companions appear in the midst of a reluctant King Valdemar’s dark night of the soul is not a surprise when we get there. One of the things that has made Kordas such a terrific character to follow is that he thinks deeply, feels much and fears often that even if he is doing his best it just isn’t enough.

And he’s not wrong. His kingdom has barely begun. He’s a good man who has done his best but he’s made a few mistakes, as humans do. He’s seen the depths to which an empire and its rulers can sink in the Eastern Empire that he and his people fled from. He’s discovered tiny seeds of those same privileged attitudes in some of his own people, including his younger son.

He fears, rightly so, that no matter how good and fair and just a legacy he leaves, both in the laws being created and the standard of behavior he exhibits, that over time his descendants will fall prey to the same forces that eventually brought the empire to destruction.

So he hopes and he prays and he cries out for a way to keep his kingdom in the light. And he’s answered by the Powers with the galloping hooves of the first Companions.

Now he just has to figure out what comes next. For himself, for his heir, for his kingdom and for his people.

As an implacable enemy marches towards his borders.

Escape Rating A: Valdemar has always been a bit of an anomaly as far as fantasy worlds go. Most epic fantasies are set at times and in places that are in so much turmoil that that are just no nice places to visit and you really wouldn’t want to live there. There are a few exceptions, like Pern, Celta and Harmony, but for the most part, by the time that an epic fantasy series gets written about a place – or epic space opera or a combination thereof – the situation has gotten so FUBAR that liveability is a long way off even by the series’ end.

Which, in a way, means that the Valdemar series, at least the books that are set after the Founding of Valdemar, were cozy fantasy before it was cool. All the problems are human-scale even when they’re not precisely human-shaped, and those problems are not entrenched because the Companions keep them from reaching that point at least within Valdemar’s borders.

The Founding of Valdemar series has been the story of how Valdemar got to be that liveable place we’ve come to know and love, and it’s a humdinger of a start.

Things are never easy. At this point in the Kingdom’s history, they’re barely ten years into what will be a long and storied future. But the situation is neither long nor storied yet. They’re still at the point where the traditions that will sustain them haven’t been created, let alone settled, and Valdemar, both the person and the kingdom, are still figuring out how things are going to go.

Which means that a chunk of the story is involved with literally how the sausage of government gets made, as they have very little to go by. So the rules are being created as a combination of what the Duchy of Valdemar used to do that was good, not doing the things that the Eastern Empire did that were bad, and altering those ideas to fit their new circumstances.

It is generally a two-steps forward, one-step back proposition. We know that sausage is going to be fairly tasty by the time it reaches Queen Selenay in Arrows of the Queen, but making it is hard and frustrating work.

Work that’s hindered by nobles who think that normal means they can go back to some of their more self-indulgent ways, while it’s helped by those who have grown up in the new ways of doing things, like Crown Prince Restil has, and who are now adults and can pick up some of the reins of their own power.

And of course there’s an external threat on the horizon, and much of the action of this entry in the series shows how all those plans and new procedures both help and hinder the preparations for what they hope will be a small-scale war. Emphasis on small with fears focused on war.

To make a long but still beloved story short, Valdemar is a lot of fun to read, especially if you enjoy books where intelligent and competent people do their level best to make good things happen. If you liked L.E. Modesitt’s Imager Portfolio, The Founding of Valdemar trilogy has the same feel to it as that series did after Scholar.

If you read Valdemar back in the day but not recently, Beyond is a great place to get back into the series as it is so “foundational” to what happened later that you don’t need to remember what happened later to get back in there. I would not recommend starting here with Valdemar, as this is very definitely an ending of a chapter, even if it is a beginning for everything we already know.

One final note, and it’s a bit of a trigger warning. As part of the monumental events that bring the Companions to Valdemar, the mages’ beloved, and surprisingly long-lived cat, Sydney-You-Asshole – and yes, that moniker is the cat’s name and he’s EARNED it over the course of this series – choses to go off into the woods on his last journey in the moment the Companions arrive.

The tributes to Sydney-You-Asshole’s death were many and heartfelt, particularly deeply touching to the heart of any reader who has a beloved companion animal that is gone. There is still dust in this review as I write about it – so be prepared.

However, considering that the method of Sydney’s passing was to leave his friends and family as the gate to the Powers was open, I have to wonder if he didn’t turn out to be the archetype for the Firecats of Vkandis. Not that Sydney was a flame point – he was, in fact, a void – but learning at some later point that his attitude was passed down in some fashion to the firecats would not be a surprise. At all. Sydney-You-Asshole certainly had all the cattitude required to become the progenitor of a god’s avatar – but then again, most cats do.

Returning to Valdemar through this Founding series has been a joy and a delight, and has provided the opportunity to slip back into a series that I’ve always loved. Which means I have yet more trips to Valdemar to look forward to, starting with Gryphon’s Valor, the forthcoming follow up to this year’s marvelous Gryphon in Light.

Review: We Are the Crisis by Cadwell Turnbull

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
Review: We Are the Crisis by Cadwell TurnbullWe Are the Crisis (Convergence Saga #2) by Cadwell Turnbull
Narrator: Dion Graham
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, horror, science fiction, urban fantasy
Series: Convergence Saga #2
Pages: 338
Length: 9 hours and 7 minutes
Published by Blackstone Publishing on November 7, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In We Are the Crisis—the second book in the Convergence Saga from award-winning author Cadwell Turnbull—humans and monsters come into conflict in a magical and dangerous world as civil rights collide with preternatural forces.
In this highly anticipated sequel, set a few years after No Gods, No Monsters, humanity continues to grapple with the revelation that supernatural beings exist. A werewolf pack investigates the strange disappearances of former members and ends up unraveling a greater conspiracy, while back on St. Thomas, a hurricane approaches and a political debate over monster’s rights ignites tensions in the local community.
Meanwhile, New Era—a pro-monster activist group—works to build a network between monsters and humans, but their mission is threatened by hate crimes perpetrated by a human-supremacist group known as the Black Hand. And beneath it all two ancient orders escalate their conflict, revealing dangerous secrets about the gods and the very origins of magic in the universe.
Told backward and forward in time as events escalate and unravel, We Are the Crisis is a brilliant contemporary fantasy that takes readers on an immersive and thrilling journey.

My Review:

This book is a monster. The kind with tentacles that slither into the sort of places where even fools’ hindbrains stop them from rushing in and angels rightfully fear to tread.

There are also monsters in this book, because that’s the premise behind the entire Convergence Saga, which began with No Gods, No Monsters. Which is both a play on the old anarchist slogan, “No Gods, No Masters.” as well as part and parcel of the whole mind screw of the series so far.

Because there are certainly people acting monstrously on both sides of the human/monster divide.

That divide was made apparent in that first book, as the ‘things that go bump in the night’ walked out of the shadows and confronted a line of cops who got scared and/or trigger happy and killed them all. Even though that particular set of monsters, werewolves one and all, did nothing overtly threatening. They merely threatened the human belief that garden-variety humans were at the top of the food chain.

Which they were suddenly and obviously not.

We Are the Crisis continues the exploration of a universe where at least some of the creatures who have always walked among us have come out of the monster closet and in a bid to live their lives openly among us. (Also, it is very much a continuation that expects the reader to have already been introduced to the multiple threads of this story in No Gods, No Monsters. In other words, start there, not here.)

Some humans are afraid, and some of those who are afraid are acting out of their fear in the most monstrous way possible. But isn’t that exactly what humans do?

But it’s not just about this world, and that’s where the story picks up its tentacles and shakes them at the reader along with shaking the reader’s view of what is going on and where it’s going on at and who is pulling the strings and the levers.

Because this is a story of the multiverse, one where the monsters are emerging on multiple worlds, generally with catastrophic results, at least for themselves. Those worlds are converging – and so are those catastrophic results.

And that crisis? It’s spreading, from one to another, like a multiverse-wide case of the plague. One that everyone is going to catch – unless someone, some monster, finds a better way. Even though they’ll more than likely die trying.

Escape Rating B+: The story so far, with the separation of its many and various threads and its detachment from its characters, reads like a kind of fever dream. Or at least it feels that way when read by its marvelous narrator Dion Graham.

I’ve listened to both books in the Convergence Saga, and Graham’s voice always hypnotizes me. He gives a terrific performance the perfectly matches the laid-back nature of the storytelling, ashe voices the character who stands outside the story and observes all the crises as they occur – and relates those crises and how they got there to us.

His narration carried me through points and places where even when it was clear what was happening in the moment the way it all fit together was totally obscured, which is exactly the way the story was being told – amidst not one but multiple fogs of a war yet to come.

(Full confession, I would cheerfully listen to Dion Graham read the most boring book in existence and I’d still be utterly enthralled. However, at least so far, the Convergence Saga has been anything BUT boring. Confusing at points, but never, EVER dull.)

Part of what makes this story so compelling is its blend of commentary about the real present with the historic paranormal with the outright fantastic. The treatment of the monsters and the meteoric rise of a well-funded organization to put them down has entirely too many parallels to both history and the present for that to be coincidental, and it makes the treatment of the so-called monsters just that much more chilling because it is just that much more real.

At the same time, there’s a dawning revelation that is easy to overlook – particularly in audio because the references to it flash by so quickly – that although the same kind of thing is happening to all these people – it’s not happening in the same universe. That the woman who met – and disliked – the real Aleister Crowley isn’t part of the same history as the woman who was mentored by a vampire which isn’t the same universe as the man who detaches from his world to view all the others.

So that crisis, which at first feels like it’s happening very fast and all over, diffuses across multiple worlds and then draws itself back in again. Just in time for what looks to be a resounding cataclysm that will hopefully be resolved in the third book in this projected trilogy.

Readers, including this one, will certainly be on tenterhooks waiting for that final book, because this story – and this crisis – is far from over.

Review: Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen Spotswood

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A++ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Murder Crossed Her Mind by Stephen SpotswoodMurder Crossed Her Mind (Pentecost and Parker #4) by Stephen Spotswood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Pentecost and Parker #4
Pages: 384
Published by Doubleday Books on December 5, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Role Playing by Cathy Yardley

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Role Playing by Cathy YardleyRole Playing by Cathy Yardley
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, geek romance, relationship fiction
Pages: 331
Published by Montlake on July 1, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From Cathy Yardley, author of Love, Comment, Subscribe, comes an emotional rom-com about two middle-aged gamers who grow their online connection into an IRL love story.
Maggie is an unapologetically grumpy forty-eight-year-old hermit. But when her college-aged son makes her a deal—he’ll be more social if she does the same—she can’t refuse. She joins a new online gaming guild led by a friendly healer named Otter. So that nobody gets the wrong idea, she calls herself Bogwitch.
Otter is Aiden, a fifty-year-old optimist using the guild as an emotional outlet from his family drama caring for his aging mother while his brother plays house with Aiden’s ex-fiancée.
Bogwitch and Otter become fast virtual friends, but there’s a catch. Bogwitch thinks Otter is a college student. Otter assumes Bogwitch is an octogenarian.
When they finally meet face-to-face—after a rocky, shocking start—the unlikely pair of sunshine and stormy personalities grow tentatively closer. But Maggie’s previous relationships have left her bitter, and Aiden’s got a complicated past of his own.
Everything’s easier online. Can they make it work in real life?

My Review:

I was tempted to start this review by doing one of those “there are two types of people” kind of things, but those always leave some people out. Also, in this particular case, there are four types of people, introverts, extroverts, ambiverts and omniverts.

This is very much a story about introverts, as both Maggie and Aiden are both clearly on the far end of the introvert side of the introvert vs. extrovert teeter-totter. Maggie, in fact, may be just a bit too far over, as she realizes that she hasn’t been outside in days and has run out of absolutely every food in her pantry and will be forced to rely on condiments if she doesn’t go to the local small town gossip factory that passes for a grocery store.

For anyone wondering why not just get food delivered, well, food delivery is something that Maggie misses – a lot – by having moved to tiny Fool’s Falls in eastern Washington State. She’s so far out of town that even the local pizza place doesn’t deliver.

Maggie is a freelance editor, so she doesn’t need to go TO a job to HAVE a job. She’d rather socialize online anyway, which is why she’s still very much an online gamer at 48. She’s also suffering – really, really hard – from empty nest syndrome as her son, and fellow introvert – has just started college at the University of Washington in Seattle.

But she’s right about the grocery store being town gossip central, and she’s equally right about being accosted the minute she steps in by one of the local, means so very well but isn’t listening, obvious, oblivious, obligate extroverts who is determined that Maggie get out of her house and won’t take no for an answer.

Won’t even hear ‘no’ as an answer.

Which is where Role Playing takes off, as Maggie finds herself stuck in the role of introvert at a party of extroverts who all focus on her. One thing leads to another – not necessarily bad things, just frustrating things from Maggie’s point of view – leading to the lovely heartwarming answer to a question that hasn’t been asked but should be: how do introverts find each other as they retreat to their homes to escape a world full of loud, intrusive extroverts who are just sure that their way is best.

The answer is delightful from beginning to end, and all the more so because Maggie and Aiden – or rather Bogwitch and Otter – are not your typical 20somethings finding true love. Instead, it’s a story about two grown ups who have given up on finding someone who will ‘get’ them EXACTLY as they are, and who will love them not in spite of their introversion, or even because of it, but because together they fit in a way that neither ever expected to find.

And it makes for the best kind of romance, between two people who have accepted who they are in themselves and have finally found ‘their’ person in spite of all the meddlers and extroverts trying to get in their way.

Escape Rating A: I picked this book out of the virtually towering TBR pile for two reasons. One, I loved the author’s Fandom Hearts series with its combination of romance and geeky fun. And two, because it’s a reality in my house, particularly this month when there are long weekends and time off built in, that the two introverts who live here are going to be spending a LOT of time playing video games. Because that’s part of what brought us together, too.

So, I fell hard for this book because I felt hard for both Maggie and Aiden, but especially for Maggie. I really got her, both in the whole sense of how easy it is to get lost in your own little world when your job lets you avoid the big world outside – even if it’s lonely. AND her combination of extreme annoyance and absolute cringing when confronted with determined extroverts – because they are all determined and they are all wrong but convinced that they are right.

(Obviously I’m venting my own feelings here, but hers were just SO REAL and felt SO TRUE. Also, I’m also still a gamer, and a bit older than Maggie, so people’s reactions to that part of her persona felt equally spot on.)

I digress, but hopefully in a germane way.

And then there’s Aiden, who is caught up in a bunch of really, really HARD adult dilemmas, with no good outlet for the stress except, of course in this context, gaming. (I understand so completely that there are nights when pixels just need to die that I can’t even…)

Both Maggie and Aiden are in some very hard places, but they are also very grown up places. Maggie needs to make a life that works for her by herself now that her son is in college. Which is going to mean changes – and that she’ll have to find ‘her people’ somehow because Kit’s presence in the house kept the social isolation at bay for both of them.

Aiden has also been in a holding pattern as he came home to tiny Fool’s Falls to take care of his dying father. But his father has been dead for a year and Aiden is left in a place he never wanted to come back to, dealing with his grief-stricken mother who is determined to blame Aiden for never being the son his parents wanted him to be in spite of his very real success.

His mental health requires his departure, but his mother still needs him even if she seems to hate everything he is and does. (If you’ve ever read any 9-1-1 fanfic, Aiden’s mother is toxic in the same way that Eddie’s mother is. I digress again, but geeky references are part of the fun of this story)

Maggie and Aiden find each other through the gaming that everyone in their lives thinks they should have given up years ago. Quite possibly because it’s a symbol of the fact that they are both determined to live THEIR OWN lives and not FOR anyone else.

Obviously, I had a ball with Role Playing, to the point that I’m a bit chagrined that I missed it when it came out back in July , but am oh-so-glad I rediscovered it now thanks to Book Riot’s Best Books of 2023. I sincerely hope the author gives us some more grown-up but still geeky romances to fall in love with, but in the meantime I’m going back to see where I left off with Fandom Hearts the next time I need to put a little more heart in my reading!

Review: Anything with Nothing edited by Mercedes Lackey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Anything with Nothing edited by Mercedes LackeyAnything With Nothing (Tales of Valdemar #17) by Mercedes Lackey
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: anthologies, epic fantasy, fantasy
Series: Tales of Valdemar #17, Valdemar (Publication order) #57
Pages: 368
Published by DAW on November 28, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

This 17th anthology of short stories set in the beloved Valdemar high fantasy universe features tales by debut and established authors and a brand-new story from Mercedes Lackey.
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.
Join a variety of authors as they ride with Mercedes Lackey to the beloved land of Valdemar and experience the many facets of this storied high fantasy realm.

My Review:

A huge part of the charm of the Valdemar series is that, after so many years of chronicles, the world is large in scope, both in geography and in history, and there are plenty of times and places in which to set stories about how it came to be, what makes it tick – and the times and places when, in spite of everyone’s best efforts – situations have gone off the rails.

At the same time, it seems like a relatively livable place, allowing for stories where humans – with or without the help of magical, horse-like Companions – manage to fix what’s gone wrong or at least make a good stab at.

Or, when necessary, a good stab at whoever has done the wrong.

The stories in this SEVENTEENTH collection of Tales of Valdemar cast a wide net over Valdemar’s history, from not long after the Founding we’ve seen in the new Founding of Valdemar trilogy, all the way up to Selenay’s time, while geographically the stories spread across Valdemar and into the borderlands with Hardorn and Karse – if not just a bit over.

And it’s an absolute delight from beginning to end for anyone who has ever spent time in Valdemar, whether they’ve been visiting from the very beginning, back in Arrows of the Queen, just discovered Valdemar with the marvelous Founding of Valdemar trilogy (Beyond, Into the West, and the upcoming Valdemar) or who have dipped in here and there and then over the years.

Anything with Nothing, both the collection and the specific story by Lackey herself that closes out this collection, turned out to be the perfect way to get familiar with this world, once again, in preparation for discovering the final pieces of how Valdemar came to be in the soon-to-be-released book of the same title, Valdemar.

Escape Rating A-: The previous Tales of Valdemar collection, Shenanigans, featured stories that were all centered around the title theme, meaning that in one way or another they all featured tricks or pranks.

Likewise, the stories in this collection all center around the theme of making do or doing without, of persevering in the face of not having nearly enough. In other words, about creating pretty much anything out of not very much at all.

My favorite story in this collection is “Look to Your Houses” by Fiona Patton. It’s a slice of life story, as many of the stories in these collections often turn out to be, but in this case it’s the slice of a particular life, that of a City Guardhouse Sergeant caught between the rock of how things are supposed to be done and the hard place of how things actually get done when he’s forced to reconcile those two frequently opposing states of being in preparation for a new commander’s assignment to his station. The way that particular dilemma was handled, and the dichotomy between the rules and real life, gave me vibes of Sam Vimes and the City Watch in the Discworld. This story could have just as easily been part of the Discworld  City Watch subseries and it would have fit right in.

My favorite purely Valdemar story turned out to be the title story, “Anything, with Nothing” by Mercedes Lackey, for the way that the town comes together, the way that Herald Tadeus steps up, the way that his Companion manages to insert her own bit of shenanigans AND the way that the mercenaries got completely flummoxed by a ‘Ghost Squad’ of well-led villagers and the instant communication that Companions make possible.

Many of the stories in this collection take place either as magic was fading or after it was already gone. In other words, in the run up to the Last Herald Mage trilogy and in the centuries after of managing without the big, flashy magic gifts.

Quite a few of the stories center around characters who, because of that lack of magic, have more than a bit of imposter syndrome, as Herald Tad does in “Anything, with Nothing”. Those stories include “In Memory’s Vault” by Kristin Schwengel, “Warp and Weft” by Diana Paxson, “Enough” by Louisa Swann, “Wooden Horses” by Rosemary Edghill, “Intrigue in Althor” by Jeanne Adams, and “Old Wounds” by Terry O’Brien.

Even though the purpose of the Companions is to help keep Valdemar on the straight and narrow, to keep it working for most of its people most of the time, humans are still gonna human, especially when they believe they are away from the eyes and eyes of the Companions and their Heralds.

Meaning that several stories focus on the problems that result when, as the old saying goes, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” regardless of whether that power is ‘might makes right’ or ‘they who have the gold make the rules’ or the power of social opprobrium and the morality police.

Those stories include “Good Intentions” by Stephanie D. Shaver, “Beebalm and Bergamot” by Cat Rambo, and “What a Chosen Family Chooses” by Dee Shull.

There are also several stories about folks have either fallen into hard times or onto mean streets, both in Haven and outside it, or have otherwise been abused by the system in general, their fellow humans in particular, or a bit of both. “A Day’s Work” by Charlotte E. English and “Wooden Horses” by Rosemary Edghill are both particularly heartbreaking in this regard.

Last but not least, there are several marvelous stories in this collection that would have been equally at home in Never Too Old to Save the World, that marvelous collection of fantasy and SF stories that feature protagonists who become the ‘Chosen One’ in middle age or later. I particularly want to give a shoutout to four of these stories, “Needs Must When Evil Bides” by Jennifer Brozek, “What You Know How to See” by Dayle A. Dermatitis, “Warp and Weft” by Diana Paxson, and “Once a Bandit” by Brigid Collins.

While I haven’t listed every story in this collection, I did absolutely enjoy them all. And I’m aware that I’ve mentioned a few of the stories more than once, which hopefully gives you the idea that I liked them a LOT, because I absolutely did – even the ones that went to the darkest places and broke my heart.

So, if you’ve missed Valdemar the place and are looking for something to tide you over until Valdemar the final book in the Founding of Valdemar trilogy comes out between Christmas and New Year’s, I highly recommend picking up Anything with Nothing to get you in the mood for that truly epic story coming SOON!

Review: Calamity by Constance Fay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Calamity by Constance FayCalamity (Uncharted Hearts, #1) by Constance Fay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Uncharted Hearts #1
Pages: 320
Published by Bramble Romance on November 14, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Bramble's inaugural debut is equal parts steamy interstellar romance and sci-fi adventure, perfect for fans of Firefly and Ilona Andrews.
She’s got a ramshackle spaceship, a misfit crew, and a big problem with its sexy newest member…
Temperance Reed, banished from the wealthy and dangerous Fifteen Families, just wants to keep her crew together after their feckless captain ran off with the intern. But she’s drowning in debt and revolutionary new engine technology is about to make her beloved ship obsolete.
Enter Arcadio Escajeda. Second child of the terrifying Escajeda Family, he’s the thorn in Temper’s side as they’re sent off on a scouting mission on the backwater desert planet of Herschel 2. They throw sparks every time they meet but Temper’s suspicions of his ulterior motives only serve to fuel the flames between them.
Despite volcanic eruptions, secret cultists, and deadly galactic fighters, the greatest threat on this mission may be to Temper’s heart.

My Review:

They had me at Firefly. Seriously. I’m still a sucker for another trip on anything like the Serenity, and Calamity, both the ship and the person she’s named for, certainly flies a very similar trajectory out in the black.

But Temperance Reed, infamous as just ‘Temper’ for damn good reasons, isn’t really all that much like Mal Reynolds. Mal seems to have started life close to the bottom in his ‘verse, while Temperance Reed, once upon a time, was at the top of hers.

However, being a soldier imploded his life, being the younger sister of an entitled asshole blew up hers, and they both end up in the same place, as captains of scrappy, ramshackle ships they can barely manage to keep flying, with misfit crews, taking jobs they know they shouldn’t take but can’t afford to turn down, making the best of the bad hand that life has dealt them.

Once upon a time, Temper Reed was the child of one of the ‘Ten’, one of the mega-rich, mega-corp, mercantile families that control their galaxy. But the problem with Temper wasn’t so much her temper as it was her older brother’s. He was the heir, she was the spare, but she was their parents’ favorite.

So once they were gone, his insecurities and megalomania combined to take her family’s development in a direction she knew her parents would never have condoned. Instead of continuing to create cutting-edge tech utilizing AI and language processing, her brother Frederick turned them into a ruthless slice and dice operation that just killed off competition – literally – and then swooped in to buy out the remainders.

They stopped creating. And Temper stopped believing, to the point where she rebelled and he officially disowned and banished her to the unregulated black. There’s more to that story, and it’s all awful. Awfully well told and revealed, but still awful.

Temper and her crew are on borrowed time, and the ship is in hock up to Temper’s eyebrows. So when one of the really big conglomerate families offers them a job with premium pay, Temper knows she has to take it, even though she also knows that they’re concealing a whole lot of the details about what’s really going on,  AND that she and her crew are expendable in the first place and they don’t plan to pay them even if they survive.

What she doesn’t expect is a corporate minder in the much too handsome and appealing person of one of the family’s younger sons, Arcadio Escajeda. She’s sure she can ignore her hormones in favor of the common sense that’s telling her that family scions in good standing absolutely do not take up with banished and reviled traitors to their own families.

While Temper may be swimming up the River DeNial, wherever that might be located in her ‘verse, it’s not Arcadio’s perfectly sculpted hotness that throws her good sense over its shoulder and takes it along for the ride – it’s his willingness to truly BE a part of her crew no matter how boring or dangerous the duty might be. Along with just how damn good he is at helping her save them all.

Temper, apparently, is a sucker for competence. While Arcadio turns out to be a sucker for Calamity.

Escape Rating A+: Damn this is fun. Or should I say shiny. Fun, absolutely, utterly fun. I had a terrific time reading this. It’s a wild thrill ride of a science fiction adventure with a (dare I say it?) core of molten lava in multiple senses of all those words.

But a big chunk of the reason I loved it was because of just how well it fits into the science fiction romance tradition – which has never gotten near as much love as it deserves. So I have hopes that Tor Books’ creation of the Bramble imprint, specifically for the purpose of publishing science fiction romance, will do a lot to turn that tide.

The thing about SFR as a genre is that it has to sit on the fence between SF and romance and not get too many splinters up its ass from either side – unless it turns out that the romantic partners are into that sort of thing. Which means that the worldbuilding and plotting has to tell a credible SF story while putting a romance with at least a HFN (that’s Happy For Now), at its heart.

It’s not that it hasn’t been done, because it most definitely has. While Firefly hinted at it – frequently and often – that wasn’t the heart of that story. And the blurb’s mention of Ilona Andrews isn’t quite right as most of her work has been urban fantasy. Compelling with wonderful storytelling and world creation, but not SFR except for her short but marvelous Kinsmen series.

Instead, the comparisons are to Rachel Bach’s Paradox series, Valerie Valdes’ more recent Chilling Effect series, K.B. Wagers’ Indranan War, and even going back to Nina Croft’s Dark Desires series and further back to Lois McMaster Bujold’s long-running Vorkosigan Saga.

I can’t leave that list without mentioning the marvelous – and marvelously prolific – Anna Hackett, who has created some truly terrific universes, terribly rapacious villains, and steam-up-the spaceship windows SFR series for anyone who loves a rollicking good SF adventure with a steamy heart. (If you like the sound of Calamity, or if you loved any of the above mentioned, check out Hackett’s Eon Warriors series and its sequels for some excellent SFR!)

Between its background of mercantile, family-run empires, unhinged heirs and abusive siblings, battered smugglers and their ships along with its story of a star-crossed romance with a change, Calamity is a worthwhile successor to any and all of the above. And if Tor Books’ creation of Bramble makes readers re-evaluate just how great a taste it can be to add a bit of romance to their SF, that’s all to the good.

Because Calamity manages to straddle that fence very, very well. The world is solidly built, the heroes are just the right level of ragtag, Temper is most definitely interestingly flawed but still striving, and the mission is exciting and FUBAR’d at the same time – just as it should be.

The romance between Temper and Arcadio has the deliciousness of being oh-so-right, oh-so-wrong and oh-so-big-a-mistake wrapped up in a dangerous package that hits all the right places, with all the intrusive wink-wink, nod-nod poking from the crew needed to make it both sweet and spectacle at the same time. While the save-the-mission-and-maybe-die-trying ending was just the kind of wild ride that SF readers love.

Which I most certainly did.

Calamity is both the author’s debut novel AND the book that marks the kickoff for Bramble, and it’s a grand book to carry both of those banners. I can’t wait to see what else they have in store for SFR lovers in the months to come. And Temper will be back next June in Fiasco, which, if Calamity is anything to go by, will probably be filled with oodles of fiascos for Temper and her crew while delivering another kickass science fiction adventure wrapped around a fantastic romance!

Review: A Power Unbound by Freya Marske

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
Review: A Power Unbound by Freya MarskeA Power Unbound (The Last Binding, #3) by Freya Marske
Narrator: Josh Dylan
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy romance, gaslamp, historical fantasy, M/M romance
Series: Last Binding #3
Pages: 432
Length: 16 hours and 7 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tordotcom on November 7, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A Power Unbound is the final entry in Freya Marske’s beloved, award-winning Last Binding trilogy, the queer historical fantasy series that began with A Marvellous Light.
Secrets! Magic! Enemies to. . .something more?
Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, would love a nice, safe, comfortable life. After the death of his twin sister, he thought he was done with magic for good. But with the threat of a dangerous ritual hanging over every magician in Britain, he’s drawn reluctantly back into that world.
Now Jack is living in a bizarre puzzle-box of a magical London townhouse, helping an unlikely group of friends track down the final piece of the Last Contract before their enemies can do the same. And to make matters worse, they need the help of writer and thief Alan Ross.
Cagey and argumentative, Alan is only in this for the money. The aristocratic Lord Hawthorn, with all his unearned power, is everything that Alan hates. And unfortunately, Alan happens to be everything that Jack wants in one gorgeous, infuriating package.
When a plot to seize unimaginable power comes to a head at Cheetham Hall―Jack’s ancestral family estate, a land so old and bound in oaths that it’s grown a personality as prickly as its owner―Jack, Alan and their allies will become entangled in a night of champagne, secrets, and bloody sacrifice . . . and the foundations of magic in Britain will be torn up by the roots before the end.

My Review:

This series, The Last Binding, has always been a story about power, wrapped inside a bit of pretty fantasy romance and steeped in the verbal byplay of a comedy of manners. But at the heart of all the fluff and froth, of which there has been a delicious amount, is a core of cold, hard steel.

The question has always been whose, whose power, whose needs, who decides who are the many and who are the few, and who gets to wield all the power at the foundation of British magic.

Because there really is a crisis coming, not just to British magic but to the world as a whole. That crisis, based on timing, is World War I. So the looming threat on the horizon is all too real. The problem is that too many at the pinnacle of power have decided that they are the only people capable of wielding that power, and that anyone who stands in their way is to be cut down. Permanently – and all too often with malice aforethought.

That they’ll frankly be doing their enemy’s work for them doesn’t occur to any of them. That no one has had even a thought to how the power was intended to be held and wielded doesn’t even cross their minds.

But it does cross the minds of our ragtag group of, let’s call them questioners of whether any ends justify the means that are being gone to. Especially as ALL of them have been the victims of those means in one way or another.

A Power Unbound begins by answering the questions raised early in A Marvellous Light, the questions about how and why Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, lost his magic and his twin sister in the first place. The questions about just how long this nefarious plot has been going on, and just how early it sunk to its terrible depths.

Depths which are displayed on the grandest stage possible for all the magical world to see, as no one bats an eye as long as they get to keep their own power. But magic itself has a say, and it has finally found agents through whom it can be said.

Their world will never be the same. Nor should it be.

Escape Rating B: I am all over the map about this story, because it is such a wild mixture of historical fantasy, power tripping and political shenanigans, mystery, romance and comedy of manners. Whether any reader will fall in love with the series probably depends on which parts of the melange they are in this thing for.

Which is where all the reading mileage is going to end up varying. A LOT.

I got into the first book, A Marvellous Light, for the magical and political skullduggery. It begins as a murder mystery and then dives into the murky depths of magic and politics and starts the whole series on its meditations about power and its ultimate corruption. A marvelous queer romance also occurs during the course of that story, but it never took a backseat to the magic and the mystery.

But the balancing act between the romance and the magical mystery tour started to tip in the second book in the series. I did enjoy A Restless Truth for its shipboard antics and the way it moved the search for the Last Contract two steps forward and one step back, but it felt a bit like the romance got a bit in the way of the parts of the story I was there for.

From my perspective, A Power Unbound got a bit too bound up in the romance between Jack and Alan for the first half of the book. A reader who is in this series for its romances will probably feel a lot differently, but for this reader it felt like the story was spinning its wheels in endless setup as Jack and Alan teetered on the knife edge of ‘will they, won’t they’. In the first half of the story the romance was at the center of the story rather than the magical mystery political pot boiling over and scalding our entire band of heroes, and I had hoped for the reverse.

At about the halfway point, which is where I switched from audio to text because I needed the story to just get on with it, the pace picked up, the amount of feces hitting the oscillating device increased dramatically, the plots on both sides got ever more convoluted, Murphy’s Law rained all over everyone, and the whole thing galloped towards an epic conclusion that was not quite the one that anyone expected but was absolutely perfect as a way of bringing the runaway plot train to a satisfying stop.

(For anyone considering the audio, the narrator did an excellent job, I just wanted the whole thing to move along faster than audio naturally or even unnaturally does. I do listen to audio because I love the voices. Mickey Mouse’s voice is another thing entirely – although it would have been hilarious for the sex scenes, it would absolutely have set the wrong tone.)

I find myself back at my earlier statement. How much a reader will love A Power Unbound will depend on which parts of the story that reader is here after. If you’re here for the romance, this one is a delight. If you’re here for the magical power and politics contest, the second half is fantastic but the romance-centered first half gets in the way of figuring out all of the whos and why they done what they done. (The whos are mostly obvious, but the whys are considerably less so.)

No matter which side of that divide you fall on, anyone who has fallen for this marvelous cast of sinners with the occasional saintly impulse will be thrilled by the epic, world-shattering ending!