A fun, fast paced urban fantasy with an intriguing romantic subplot and a setting that will delight lovers of Balkan folklore.
I was extremely excited A fun, fast paced urban fantasy with an intriguing romantic subplot and a setting that will delight lovers of Balkan folklore.
I was extremely excited about this Bulgarian-inspired fantasy and I’m glad to say it did not disappoint. Set in a world inspired by Communist Bulgaria, Foul Days follows disgraced witch Kosara as she battles monsters, criminals, and a corrupt political system to protect herself and the city of Chernograd. The book’s main strength is definitely its rich and vivid world building, which includes traditional Slavic creatures and myths as well as references to Eastern European history under Communism (the Wall, for example, is an obvious stand-in for the Iron Curtain).
If you’re familiar with Balkan folks and their dry, cynical sense of humor, you will recognize these traits in Dimova’s characters. Their banter was a joy to read and I appreciated that even minor characters had distinct voices and colorful personalities.
The fast-paced, plot-driven story was both unpredictable and relatively easy to follow. I usually prefer my speculative fiction to be a bit more introspective, but since I started this while being stuck in a reading slump, I ended up really enjoying the tight pacing and exciting plot twists.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the romance. These days, it’s rare to read a fantasy where the main relationship is well developed and not based solely on lust. Even if I wouldn’t call Asen an especially charming love interest, I enjoyed seeing him and Kosera get closer and slowly grow fonder of each other. I still can’t tell if they will end up together at the end of the series, but I know I can’t wait for the sequel to come out....more
My problem with this book isn't that it's Reylo fan fiction with the serial numbers filed off. In fact, the reason I decided to pick it up in the firsMy problem with this book isn't that it's Reylo fan fiction with the serial numbers filed off. In fact, the reason I decided to pick it up in the first place was precisely that I had read, and enjoyed, the first few chapters of said fan fiction.
My problem is that it reads painfully juvenile in almost every aspect. The prose is mostly fine, if a little repetitive and rife with genre clichés, but the dialogue between the main leads becomes truly insufferable after a while. I don’t understand what’s the point of writing an adult romance if your protagonists speak and act like immature teenagers. The banter between Alaric and Talasyn reads like something you would find in a young adult book about petty high school drama, not what two heads of state at war with one another would say.
One of the reasons I usually have a hard time immersing myself in romance fantasy novels is that I feel like authors want to tackle epic plots with heavy themes (war, death, oppression, genocide), while maintaining an overall light-hearted tone. The thing is, you can’t turn a story about an epic war to resist colonization into a romantic comedy. The result is jarring, and at times, borderline grotesque. There is a scene where Alaric, the Night Emperor who’s trying to conquer Talasyn’s kingdom, is publicly called out by a nobleman who rightfully accuses him of being a genocidal war criminal. Instead of sympathizing with her compatriot, whose perspective she supposedly shares, Talasyn is too busy focusing on how hot and fearsome Alaric looks while duelling him. Am I supposed to find this endearing?
This book is also way too long. In nearly five hundred pages, very little happens in terms of romantic progression. The two leads go from hating each other’s guts in the beginning, to hating each other’s guts at the end, only now they’re—spoiler—married and forced into something resembling an alliance. Most of their interactions consist in a hundred repetitive scenes where they exchange petty, childish insults while secretly lusting after one another. You’d think that two twenty-somethings trained in politics and international relations would realize that seducing the person whose help they desperately need is a better strategy than antagonizing them; but alas, them acting according to logic would prevent the author from stretching this into a full trilogy.
I’ve seen a lot of people say that The Hurricane Wars will appeal to fans of Sarah J. Maas. Personally, I’m not so sure: compared with Maas’s recent books, this is very tame in terms of sexual content. If you like the kind of YA fantasy where the main couple spend most of their time brooding and exchanging retorts instead of actually developing their relationship, this might be the right book for you....more
The Familiar is a perfectly adequate book. The prose is serviceable. The character motivations make sense. The historical setting is carefully rendereThe Familiar is a perfectly adequate book. The prose is serviceable. The character motivations make sense. The historical setting is carefully rendered. In fact, had it been a debut novel written by an up-and-coming author, I would have praised its well constructed—if a little predictable—plot and overlooked the simplicity with which the themes are presented.
But this wasn’t written by just any author. It was written by Leigh Bardugo, a literary powerhouse who could publish her shopping list and turn it into an instant bestseller. I’ve loved some of Bardugo’s past works and heavily disliked some others, but this is the first time I feel absolutely neutral about one of her books. My feelings are probably due to the fact that nearly everything about The Familiar feels generic: the underdog female protagonist who looks plain and unremarkable, but is in fact extremely powerful; the shallow feminist message that the narrative beats you over the head with; and, of course, the shoehorned romance between a virginal young woman and a brooding immortal man. Groundbreaking.
I kept waiting for something to awaken my interest and set this story apart from the hundreds of romantasy novels that populate the shelves of book stores everywhere; but alas, that something never came. Even Bardugo’s writing style, which is usually one of her stronger assets, felt bland here. There was no trace of her signature irony and wit in the dialogue, no memorable line that stood out to me.
The characters read less like human beings and more like archetypes that the author employs to develop a plot point or drive home a certain message. Every single male character apart from the love interest is thoroughly unlikeable and misogynistic; the commentary on class and religious persecution feels very obvious and repetitive. Given that this author is known for writing layered and compelling villains, I was disappointed with how cartoonishly evil the antagonist acted right from the start.
Most of all, I was underwhelmed by the romance. The two leads seemed to have nothing in common apart from their magic, and I was puzzled by how quickly they went from barely knowing each other to being madly in love. Santangel in particular was utterly charmless and far from the twisted, dangerous demon that everyone in the book seemed to think he was.
With Ninth House, Bardugo proved that she was willing to experiment with her fiction; that she could write darker, grittier, more complex stories presenting thorny themes in a nuanced manner. None of that complexity made it to this book. This is a paint-by-numbers historical fantasy, virtually indistinguishable from the plethora of similar stories published in the past five years to chase the latest trends and appeal to the widest possible audience. I am frankly disappointed that this is all Bardugo could come up with when presented with an opportunity to write literally whatever she wanted....more
I believe getting advance review copies is a great privilege, hence why I always make a point of reading them through to the end before leavDNF at 50%
I believe getting advance review copies is a great privilege, hence why I always make a point of reading them through to the end before leaving a review. In this case, however, I must make an exception. Despite being one of my most anticipated releases of the year, The Sins on Their Bones turned out to be so excruciatingly boring that I simply could not bring myself to finish it.
To begin with, I feel like the story started in the wrong place. The characters kept referencing past events that marked both their personal lives and the history of their country, but because we don’t actually see these events unfolding or these characters bonding, it’s hard to get invested in them. Even though the stakes are literally as high as they get, we are given no reason to care about the fate of this world or the people in it. This felt like reading the sequel to a first novel that doesn’t exist.
Which brings me to my second problem: the pacing. In the two hundred pages I read, pretty much nothing happened. Characters did little but sit around moping, talking about their past, and revisiting their trauma. Alexey, the villain we’re supposed to root against, was the only one driving the plot forward and therefore the only compelling character out of the whole cast. Call me cold hearted, but I can’t bring myself to be interested in a protagonist who does nothing but sulk, drink, and have rebound sex with his equally bland best friend.
Speaking of which, what’s with all the gratuitous sex in this book? I usually don’t mind explicit scenes, but here they felt excessive and repetitive to the point that I started skimming them. We don’t need to read about the same characters having the same dysfunctional sex over and over again to understand they’re messy and tortured—we got the point the first time around. It almost feels like the author chose to throw in some random smut to compensate for the slow, uneventful plot; unfortunately, I found the romance (and the characters’ relationships in general) just as dry as the plot itself. The two main leads had no chemistry whatsoever and I simply couldn’t figure out what they saw in each other besides physical attraction.
The one thing that managed to hold my interest was the mythology. I love folklore and mysticism and enjoyed reading about this re-interpretation of Ashkenazi religious traditions. However, the lore alone wasn’t enough for me to push through the book.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Canada for this e-ARC....more
Reading She Who Became the Sun, I repeatedly felt the urge to grab the main characters by the collar and yell, “for the love of god, get some fucking Reading She Who Became the Sun, I repeatedly felt the urge to grab the main characters by the collar and yell, “for the love of god, get some fucking help”. The sequel excited no such compassionate impulse in me; instead, I was left wondering if bathing in holy water would be a viable solution to exorcise the monsters summoned by Shelley Parker-Chan.
There is no other way to put it: most of the characters in this novel are straight up demonic. There is villainy, and then there is Wang Baoxiang. I have never before read a fantasy book that could have so easily been a product of Dostoevskij’s imagination. The main cast members constantly one-up each other in terms of cruelty and depravity; just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, someone shows up with a jar of pickled hands and you lose another shred of faith in humanity. I’d truly like to know what the author was going through while drafting this, because despite her claim that she doesn’t write grimdark, He Who Drowned the World very much reads like grimdark to me. It’s not so much that the violence is especially graphic, it’s that there is almost no respite from it.
The tone is markedly more somber than in the prequel, and the narrative is permeated with a sense of oppressive hopelessness and despair. I can already tell that the main criticism readers will level at this book is that it’s too depressing and cruel. While I understand where this sentiment comes from, I’ll admit that I wasn’t overly bothered by the turn things took. While the story could have come off as voyeuristic trauma porn in the hands of a less skilled writer, Parker-Chan managed to craft such three-dimensional and compelling characters that I found myself morbidly fascinated by their horrifying descent into madness.
It helps that the plot is fast-paced and action-packed, full of twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat. Despite knowing from the beginning how the series would end—this is, after all, a retelling of the first Ming emperor’s ascent to power—I could never predict what was going to happen next; in fact, I realized at one point that I had fifteen pages left in my e-book and the story hadn’t wrapped up at all. I think it’s truly a remarkable feat to keep one’s readers guessing until the last chapter of a five-hundred page tome.
What really made the book so enjoyable for me, however, were the characters. While the protagonist Zhu is definitely morally ambiguous, her antagonists reach such hellish levels of perversion that she almost seems like a well-adjusted human in comparison. I was captivated by their tragic arcs, their Machiavellian schemes, and their supremely twisted relationships with one another. Ultimately, this is a story about the value of self-acceptance and the devastating consequences of social rejection and self-hate, particularly in relation to gender identity and expression. I think the author effectively showed how self-loathing and bigotry can destroy not just the individual, but society as a whole.
This won’t be a book for everyone. If you like your characters to be at least partially redeemable, you might be better off skipping it. It was, however, a book for me. At the end of the day, I am a simple Wuthering Heights fan who incessantly gravitates towards tormented villains doomed by the narrative.
Many thanks to Tor and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC....more
Ninefox Gambit is a competently written, creative novel that blends military sci-fi elements with themes of identity and political upheaval. This seriNinefox Gambit is a competently written, creative novel that blends military sci-fi elements with themes of identity and political upheaval. This series received immense critical acclaim upon release, and I can see why: the prose is good, the world building unique, and the plot unfolds quite cleverly. Although I thought the book was somewhat lacking in character interaction, the relationship between the two main protagonists was interesting enough to keep me engaged.
I love stories about hyper-competent, morally grey figures who always seem to be a step ahead of everyone else, and the weird gender dynamic between Cheris and Jedao added a layer of complexity that I found fascinating.
The reason I can’t bring myself to rate this book any higher is the truly egregious amount of nonsensical jargon you have to slog through to get to the good parts. One of my least favorite sci-fi tropes is the use of obscure, made-up terms to identify mundane objects or concepts that could easily be explained in simple words, for the sole purpose of confusing the reader into believing the world building is more sophisticated than it actually is.
Take, for example, the magic system. The narrative is very adamant about this being math-based magic that requires advanced knowledge of the subject to be successfully performed. However, no actual mathematical formula or concept is ever applied in the text. The characters mention math-adjacent terms such as “integral” or “polynom”, but these words could easily be replaced with generic nouns like “rule” or “spell” and nothing would change. Similarly, the way this supposedly highly technical calendrical system works is never explained.
I am by no means the first person to point out that this book is difficult to follow, but what really stood out to me is that it doesn’t need to be. The actual plot and narrative structure are quite straightforward, especially compared to other recent experimental sci-fi series like The Broken Earth or The Locked Tomb. It only sounds complicated because it uses dozens of pretentious, yet meaningless words to describe simple things, and because it assigns elaborate names, symbols, and insignia to every character and faction.
It doesn't help that the setting is generally hard to visualize. We spend hundreds of pages in spaceships, fortresses, and living spaces that I couldn’t for the life of me describe or even picture in my head. There is no atmosphere, no sense of being grounded in a different world; this, coupled with the lack of emotionally compelling scenes, made the book feel abstract and dry for the most part.
What ultimately saved the novel for me were the last few chapters, which provided much-needed insight into the protagonists’ motivations and personal background. I thought the ending posed meaningful questions about standing up to oppressive governments and the lengths political dissidents should be ready to go to achieve their goals: to what extent does the end justify the means? In hindsight, I think Lee made a compelling argument for the choices Cheris and Jedao made....more
I should probably preface my review by saying that I’ve been a vegetarian for most of my life, and that the meat industry disgusts and infuriates me. I should probably preface my review by saying that I’ve been a vegetarian for most of my life, and that the meat industry disgusts and infuriates me. The main reason I picked up this book is that I believe our society is incredibly cruel and hypocritical in the way it tolerates animal abuse, and it’s high time literature exposes the public to the ugly truth they don’t want to face.
So many points raised by Bazterrica are timely and important. I was viscerally, nauseatingly enraptured by the first half of this novel. The society depicted here is both horribly dystopian and dangerously close to our own. The author pulls no punches when exposing the manufactured distinction between creatures worth protecting (humans or, in our world, pets) and those that can be tortured and slaughtered with impunity (heads, or farmed animals). It perfectly represents the mental gymnastics people use to justify their participation in factory farming, and the capitalist horror that makes the industry profitable.
And to the outraged reviewers saying that humans “don’t have it in their hearts to be so cruel”: read about the history of slavery and genocides and you’ll quickly realize that de-humanizing certain demographics for personal profit is something we as a species are all too good at. Many elements of this dystopia are actually pulled from history and show the extent of human capacity for evil when society allows it.
Unfortunately, Tender is the Flesh completely lost me in its second half.
Most notably, at only 211 pages, this book is too long. The pacing lags and the plot relies entirely too much on shock value—which, fine, that’s part of the premise; but you can only recycle the same few gruesome points so many times before they become repetitive and therefore boring. You really don’t need multiple child rape and torture scenes to drive across the point that this society enables child abuse.
What really solidified my impression that the author was using cruelty for cruelty’s sake was characterization. Every single character apart from the protagonist is just relentlessly, irredeemably evil all the time. Even children are horrible monsters who do nothing but kick puppies while discussing how much they enjoy kicking puppies. I noticed that particular scene comes up frequently in reviews, and I think it’s because it encapsulates all of the novel’s main problems: repetitive, superfluous cruelty, stilted explanatory dialogue, inconsistent world building (are people deathly scared of animals, or are they not?).
Speaking of world building—and I can’t believe this point hasn’t been raised by anyone yet: how do nature and the global ecosystem keep functioning if all animals were exterminated decades ago? Thousands of animal species are literally essential to the survival of the planet. Yet this doesn’t seem to be a concern in this world. Also, we’re told over and over again that everyone hates animals and all species have been exterminated, yet there are still enough birds around that most people walk with an umbrella for fear that they’ll get pooped on and die? (Yes, this is an actual piece of information that gets discussed at length).
I was also disappointed that vegetarianism and veganism were never discussed as alternative options. While I know that this is set in Argentina, a country that traditionally consumes a lot of meat, I think it could have been interesting to explore other cultures’ lifestyles: for example, being vegetarian is very common in India, and one would think that it would become even more popular after animal meat became off limits.
Finally, I know this came out years before the pandemic and the author didn’t intend to make any parallelism, but the whole “evil government made up a fake deadly virus to scare people into changing their habits” conspiracy made me roll my eyes so hard. Really a plot point that hasn’t aged well....more
How this book managed to slip under everyone’s radar despite being the best fantasy of the year is a mystery to me.
Part epic folk tale, part meta-narrHow this book managed to slip under everyone’s radar despite being the best fantasy of the year is a mystery to me.
Part epic folk tale, part meta-narrative exploration of family and identity, The Spear Cuts Through Water is a work of fiction so perfectly conceived and executed that I will be personally offended if it doesn’t swoop up all the awards next season. Jimenez creates a puzzle of intersecting storylines that fit together like Russian dolls, cleverly employing different perspectives, tenses, and settings to obfuscate his intentions before finally revealing his cards to the reader at the most climactic moment.
Nothing is left to chance; from beginning to end, the narrator presents you with the exact amount of information you need to follow the story, without ever revealing too much or too little. The author trusts you to trust him and let yourself be carried away into an ancestral world where the narrative is out of your control. I can’t remember the last time I felt such a sense of wonder while reading a book: the atmospheric writing is reminiscent of Erin Morgenstern and Neil Gaiman, but Jimenez keeps a tight grip on the plot, never allowing the story to meander or the descriptions to veer into self-indulgence.
This book is an ode to storytelling. It’s a tale told by a grandmother to her favorite grandson, in a kitchen filled with smoke and the smells of a country lost to memory. It’s a foundational myth on the value of love and compassion, a family history, and a play re-enacted by ghosts in a dream theater. Above all, it is a love story stronger than gods and time....more
I wanted to like The Unbroken so bad, and for the most part, I did. The North African inspired setting is fascinating, the prose is eminently readableI wanted to like The Unbroken so bad, and for the most part, I did. The North African inspired setting is fascinating, the prose is eminently readable, and the dynamic between the two protagonists has great potential. This book was pitched to me as “a political fantasy about a disaster lesbian who makes terrible choices”, so I went in fully expecting the main character to mess things up and act in poor judgement. As a result, I wasn’t particularly bothered by Touraine’s bad decision-making skills. I think it’s perfectly understandable that, when thrown into a completely new environment and forced to reconsider her life plans, she panicked and struggled to figure out what strategy she should follow going forward.
However, and this is a big however, the same cannot be said for Luca. I have a really hard time believing that an adult woman who was raised to rule an empire could be as utterly clueless as she is in this book. Right from the beginning, I got the sense that Clark didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her character, and the few interviews I’ve read have only solidified my belief. This book cannot decide whether Luca is a ruthless colonizer who would do anything to ascend to the throne, or a compassionate ruler who sympathizes with the plight of the Qazali people. In case this isn’t clear to anyone reading, the two cannot coexist. Luca can’t have spent her entire life preparing to become queen, only to be shocked at the violence her colonial army is inflicting upon the natives. She is the Balladairan empire; her home country’s wealth and prosperity are directly dependant upon her ability to continue exploiting the colonies. (view spoiler)[Her final decision to withdraw from Qazal and grant the rebels independence reads especially absurd when you consider what a long, messy, complex process decolonization is. Given how many different interests are at stake here, the idea that one princess could just wake up one day and decide that colonialism is over with absolutely no pushback from anyone is laughable. How is the economy going to fare, now that they can’t import raw materials from Qazal anymore? Does Luca even have the legal authority to transfer sovereign powers to the rebels, when she isn’t Balladaire’s head of state yet? (hide spoiler)]
In my opinion, this inconsistent characterization negatively affects her relationship with Touraine, too. I initially thought Clark was aiming to establish them as enemies who are fatally attracted to each other; nemeses who cannot be apart, but are destined for mutual destruction. In fact, the possible presence of this trope was one of the main reasons I picked up this book. Instead, I got… an angsty romance between a semi-enslaved bodyguard and the colonizer princess who refuses to acknowledge that their interests are incompatible. An odd choice, if you ask me. (view spoiler)[Don’t even get me started about Luca asking Touraine to join her in Balladaire, and Touraine actually considering it. I understand that her whole deal is making bad choices, but this is a little too much even for her standards. (hide spoiler)]
All in all, I would say that The Unbroken is less than the sum of its parts. There is a lot to love about it: the nuanced exploration of colonialism, vivid setting, and lovable protagonist kept me interested in the story even when the politics became too hazy and unrealistic for my liking. I’m not sure I will pick up the sequel, but C.L. Clark is an author I want to read more from....more
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