The Leaning Pile of Books
Mar
14
2010

I had been thinking about picking up the next Kate Daniels book this week but didn’t since I’m not letting myself read it until after reviewing the first one (almost there – just need to write a review of The Thief and revise a draft of A Local Habitation first). Two more review copies showed up this week, though.

Changeless by Gail Carriger

Changeless is the second book in the Parasol Protectorate series and is coming out in April (although Amazon will be shipping it starting March 30). The first book in this series, Soulless, was a lot of fun to read so I’m really looking forward to this one. It was a humorous story featuring vampires and werewolves in Victorian London and a heroine born without a soul.

I’m going to skip the blurb for this one just because it does contain a spoiler for the end of the first book. If you’ve read Soulless and would like to read it (or don’t care about spoilers), you can read it here.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a pretty neat video showing how the cover for the third book (Blameless) was put together. I especially liked the revision process.

Divine Misfortune by A. Lee Martinez

Divine Misfortune is a comedic fantasy coming out in hardcover on March 26. My husband has already read this one and is planning to write a review of it, although I’m not really sure when he is going to have time to do so.

DIVINE MISFORTUNE is a story of gods and mortals—in worship, in love, and at parties.

Teri and Phil had never needed their own personal god. But when Phil is passed up for a promotion – again-it’s time to take matters into their own hands. And look online.

Choosing a god isn’t as simple as you would think. There are too many choices; and they often have very hefty prices for their eternal devotion: blood, money, sacrifices, and vows of chastity. But then they found Luka, raccoon god of prosperity. All he wants is a small cut of their good fortune.

Oh — and can he crash on their couch for a few days?

Throw in a heartbroken love goddess and an ancient deity bent on revenge and not even the gods can save Teri and Phil.

Review of Sea Dragon Heir
Mar
13
2010

Sea Dragon Heir
by Storm Constantine
384pp (Trade Paperback)
My Rating: 5.5/10
Amazon Rating: 3/5
LibraryThing Rating: 3.53/5
Goodreads Rating: 3.56/5

Sea Dragon Heir is the first book in The Chronicles of Magravandias trilogy by Storm Constantine. The next two books in this epic fantasy trilogy are The Crown of Silence and The Way of Light, respectively.

The novel starts with the end of the independent state of Caradore when it is conquered by a king of a Magravandian house. The lord of Caradore is killed while his wife attempts to hide her children. It is not long before the rest of the rest of the Palindrake family is found and the eldest son is singled out by the king. The new king would like him to submit to a ritual in which he submits all his power as the dragon heir to Madragore. The boy agrees since his mother told him it is important that he remain alive so their line can continue. She said that he must never tell his children of their heritage and that the dragon heir will sleep for a while but will not cease to exist.

Two hundred years later the Palindrake family consists of Everna and her twin siblings Valraven and Pharinet. Although Pharinet has dreamed of the dragons since she was a little girl, it is not until she is fifteen years old that she learns the truth about their heritage from Everna. The Palindrake women were priestesses of the sea dragons, and the firstborn son was the dragon heir who channeled their power. Her brother Valraven is therefore the dragon heir, but he does not know it – and Everna says they must trust in the work begun by their ancestor Ilcretia and make sure Valraven remains ignorant of this role until the time is right.


Unfortunately, Sea Dragon Heir did not live up to the standard set by Storm Constantine’s earlier Wraeththu trilogy (the first book in that trilogy is quite possibly my favorite book of all time). It was readable enough other than a couple of parts that were somewhat dull, especially toward the end, but it was missing that special something that made the Wraeththu books stand out to me. Wraeththu was original and beautifully written with multi-faceted characters that came alive and left me thinking about it for weeks after reading it. Perhaps it is unfair to compare the two since they are so different – Sea Dragon Heir is more traditional fantasy and less introspective and character-driven. However, since I loved Wraeththu so much, I find it impossible not to compare the two and Sea Dragon Heir failed to affect me even close to the same way. Once the book was out of sight, it was out of mind as well.

The early part of the book does read a bit like an old Victorian romance with some fantasy thrown in. Pharinet grows up with her closest friend Ellony and they both dream of princes who will sweep them off their feet as children. They often wonder if they are in love with each other’s brothers, and as time goes by it becomes apparent that they are expected to marry them. Ellony is ecstatic about one day becoming Valraven’s wife, but Pharinet has no real feelings for Ellony’s brother Khaster. As she does come close to marrying age, Pharinet realizes she doesn’t want Ellony to marry Valraven – because she is madly in love with her own twin brother.

Pharinet’s section was fun to read in a soap opera sort of way and she was an intriguing character. There was the tension of her relationship with Valraven, who is in love with her too. And there’s her double-edged relationship with naive, romantic Ellony, who doesn’t seem to understand that Valraven doesn’t return her feelings. Pharinet is wildly jealous of Ellony and at times she seems to hate her old friend, yet there are also times when it seems as though she cannot completely forget the close friendship she shared with her. Although it was not the most compelling reading ever, these pages did fly by.

Not quite halfway through the novel, the perspective changes from Pharinet to a completely new character, the princess Varencienne. The old characters were still present since Varencienne moved to Caradore; there was just more of her than the others. While the fantasy storyline did progress more during this perspective, Varencienne was more boring than Pharinet. She was a perfectly respectable woman and in some ways seemed more grounded and rational (i.e., she didn’t join the Valraven fan club) but parts of her story were rather dull. Like Pharinet, she was obsessive, but her dreams were all for a dead man she’d never even met – all it took was seeing his picture on the wall to set her imagination afire.

One problem I did have was I never understood why all these women were fawning over Valraven. He never did anything to make me believe he was as wonderful as Pharinet and Ellony seemed to think he was, but then I also never felt that we really learned a lot about Valraven even though he was such a central figure as the dragon heir. Other than his sister, he never really seemed to care about anyone, and he cheated on his wife with his own sibling. It was most likely completely intentional that he wasn’t supposed to be the knight in shining armor; Storm Constantine does tend to write flawed characters instead of perfectly good ones. It’s just that from what I did read about him, it never seemed credible that he’d garner such depth of feeling from so many people (as there is also a young man just as crazy about Valraven as Ellony and Pharinet).

The fantasy part of the story seemed fairly generic and predictable. It’s basically the story of an evil king who overthrows a nation, replaces its religion with their own religion, and the struggle of their ancestors to regain their place and the old ways.

For the amount that happened in this novel, it could have been a lot shorter. Toward the end I was definitely losing interest and was ready to finish it. The final pages did leave me somewhat curious as to where it was going, though, and now I’m not sure whether or not I’ll read the second book in this series.

Sea Dragon Heir had three-dimensional, flawed characters but they never came alive the same way as others Constantine has written. Although some of these protagonists were fun to read about, there were times the story dragged, particularly as the fantasy aspect seemed fairly standard. I’d recommend newcomers to the writing of Storm Constantine pick up The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit instead of this novel.

My Rating: 5.5/10

Where I got my reading copy: It was a gift from a friend.

Bone Crossed Winner
Mar
13
2010

The giveaway for Bone Crossed is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. The winner is:

Eva from Finland

Congratulations! I hope you enjoy reading it.
What Do I Read Next?
Mar
10
2010

As usual, I’m indecisive so help me decide what to read next by voting on the poll to the right. I’ll read whichever book wins when I’m done with The Gaslight Dogs and leave the poll up until I’m finished with it. And I just might run another poll when I need to choose one of the books I bought to read after that because I’m really torn about whether to read the new Carol Berg, the new Robin Hobb, the next Snow Queen book or Night’s Master or a lot of other books…

For this one, I picked some of the ones that seemed to get the most interest from the comments and threw in a couple of others. This time the choices are:

Changeless by Gail Carriger
The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker
The Last Stormlord by Glenda Larke
Master of None by Sonya Bateman
The Midnight Mayor by Kate Griffin
Servant of a Dark God by John Brown

Review of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Mar
09
2010
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
by N.K. Jemisin
432pp (Paperback)
My Rating: 9/10
Amazon Rating: 5/5
LibraryThing Rating: 4.14/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.42/5
 

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is a debut novel by N. K. Jemisin, who was recently nominated for the Nebula Award for her short story “Non-Zero Probabilities.” Even though it’s the first book in The Inheritance Trilogy, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is a complete story with a satisfying conclusion. The next two books in the series each focus on a different main character than the first one. According to Jemisin’s website, the second book The Broken Kingdoms will be released in fall 2010.

Soon after the mysterious death of her mother, Yeine Darr is summoned to the Arameri court by its ruler, her grandfather. When Yeine’s mother met her father, a minor barbarian noble, she abdicated her position as heir to the Arameri throne. The Arameri have ruled the world for a very long time due to their favor with the Skylord, one of the three major gods. The Skylord killed one of the other gods and gave the Nightlord along with his sons and daughters to the Arameri as their own personal weapons. These gods are slaves to the Arameri, bound in flesh and made to obey their every whim.

Yeine goes to the Arameri home of Sky and meets with her grandfather, who informs her that he is making her his heir while keeping her cousins as his other two heirs. She will now be a true Arameri – and will quite possibly be killed by one of her cousins in an attempt for the throne while trying to unravel the truth about the past.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is one of those books that appeals to me on so many levels and I loved it. It did have a couple of cheesy sex scenes, but other than that, I have no complaints and was completely engaged in this novel from beginning to end.

The story is told from the first person perspective of Yeine. Her narrative is very scattered and feels as though she really is telling the story to the reader as she interrupts herself often to insert information or go back and fill in parts she just remembered. For instance, when she goes to meet her grandfather for the first time, she then stops to expound on the history of the gods and how it relates to the Arameri people:

 

I knelt before my grandfather with my head bowed, hearing titters of laughter.

No, wait.

* * *

There were three gods once.

Only three, I mean. Now there are dozens, perhaps hundreds. They breed like rabbits. But once there were only three, most powerful and glorious of all: the god of day, the god of night, and the goddess of twilight and dawn. Of light and darkness and the shades between. Or order, chaos, and balance. None of that is important because one of them died, the other might as well have, and the last is the only one who matters anymore.

The Arameri get their power from this remaining god. He is called the Skyfather, Bright Itempas, and the ancestors of the Arameri were His most devoted priests. He rewarded them by giving them a weapon so mighty that no army could stand against it. They used this weapon – weapons, really – to make themselves rulers of the world.

That’s better. Now.

* * *

I knelt before my grandfather with my head bowed and my knife laid on the floor. (pp. 6)

Some may find this style a bit chaotic, but personally, I really liked it. Yeine herself is far from an omniscient narrator since she spends much of the novel trying to discover the truth about her mother and the gods (since the only accepted account allowed by the winning god may be a bit biased). Throughout the tale, more and more about the world and the characters and how everything weaves together is slowly revealed.

The world mythology was well-developed and added a lot to the novel. The gods were somewhat reminiscent of the Greek gods since they shared so many human traits and complexities. In spite of the fact that they were very powerful and different from the humans, they were also capable of jealousy, greed and love.

Most of the characters were well-written with diverse motivations. Of course, Yeine was a favorite as the point of view character and the easiest to sympathize with. She went from being leader of a relatively small nation to contending for the title of world ruler, plus she has the disadvantage of not knowing the Arameri ways like her two cousins. After Yeine, my favorite character was Sieh, the trickster god who usually appeared as a child (happily, he is the subject of the third book). At once ancient and childlike, Sieh had an interesting dual nature and before he was enslaved the world was his playground (he still has several suns that he keeps around to play with). Nahadoth, the dangerous god of night, was also a major character as Yeine’s romantic interest.

There’s a lot packed into this book and it deals with themes such as race, gender, slavery and religion. Yet these different issues are all subtly intertwined into the story – there are no long diatribes on any of them and they are all incorporated into the novel without being heavy-handed or excessive. Yeine is a dark-skinned woman raised in a matriarchal society. The gods were enslaved and this removal of the other gods affected the people’s religion and the perception of truth.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was both entertaining and different. This debut novel had a compelling story with some complex and human characters, and I’m really looking forward to reading more by N.K. Jemisin.

My Rating: 9/10

Where I got my reading copy: The publisher sent me a copy.

Excerpts:

Other Reviews:

The Leaning Pile of Books
Mar
07
2010

It was actually leaning this week since I received 7 review copies and stacked them with the need-to-review pile as they came in (which is now at 5 since I read both The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner and Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews this week – I have started on The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms review and am hoping to finish it soon). These were all unexpected review copies but there are some I will definitely be reading because they do look very interesting.

The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee

I’ve heard that Karin Lowachee’s science fiction trilogy starting with Warchild is excellent but have never read any of them (they were all out of print, although I’ve seen Warchild for sale on Amazon recently for a rather hefty chunk of change – $20 for the mass market paperback). So when I heard she had a new fantasy coming out, I was looking forward to reading it and was very happy to find a copy in my mailbox yesterday. I just started this Inuit inspired novel last night, so hopefully I can have a review up around the time it comes out in late March/early April (the publisher website has it listed as April but it is available on Amazon on March 30).

At the edge of the known world, an ancient nomadic tribe faces a new enemy-an Empire fueled by technology and war.

A young spiritwalker of the Aniw and a captain in the Ciracusan army find themselves unexpectedly thrown together. The Aniw girl, taken prisoner from her people, must teach the reluctant soldier a forbidden talent – one that may turn the tide of the war and will surely forever brand him an outcast.

From the rippling curtains of light in an Arctic sky, to the gaslit cobbled streets of the city, war is coming to the frozen north. Two people have a choice that will decide the fates of nations – and may cast them into a darkness that threatens to bring destruction to both their peoples.

The Last Stormlord by Glenda Larke

This is the first book in the Stormlord trilogy (known as the Watergivers trilogy in Australia, where it was first published). From what I read about it, it’s supposed to be fairly traditional fantasy but a good one. I actually considered reading this one next and will be giving it a try at some point. The Last Stormlord came out this month, and the second book, Stormlord Rising, will be coming out in the US in August 2010 and in the UK in September 2010 (it just came out at the beginning of this month in Australia).

Shale is the lowest of the low-an outcast from a poor village in the heart of the desert. In the desert water is life, and currency, and Shale has none. But he has a secret. It’s the one thing that keeps him alive and may save all the cities of the Quartern in the days to come. If it doesn’t get him killed first…

Terelle is a slave fleeing a life as a courtesan. She finds shelter in the home of an elderly painter but as she learns the strange and powerful secrets of his art she fears she may have traded a life of servitude for something far more perilous…

The Stormlord is dying in his tower and there is no one, by accident or design, to take his place. He brings the rain from the distant seas to his people. Without a Stormlord, the cities of the Quartern will wither and die.

Their civilization is at the brink of disaster. If Shale and Terelle can find a way to save themselves, they may just save them all. Water is life and the wells are running dry…

The Folding Knife by K.J. Parker

Since I have heard some good things about other books by K.J. Parker, this was another one I considered reading next and I am planning to read it at some point. I can’t find any information on whether it is a stand alone or the start of a series on the publisher or author website (the latter is still in the works and doesn’t really have any information at all). The Folding Knife was released last month.

Basso the Magnificent. Basso the Great. Basso the Wise. Basso the Murderer.

The First Citizen of the Vesani Republic is an extraordinary man. He is ruthless, cunning, and above all, lucky. He brings wealth and power and prestige to his people. But with power comes unwanted attention, and Basso must defend his nation and himself from threats foreign and domestic. In a lifetime of crucial decisions, he’s only ever made one mistake.

One mistake, though, can be enough.

The Midnight Mayor by Kate Griffin

Kate Griffin also writes YA under the name Catherine Webb. This is the sequel to A Madness of Angels, an urban fantasy set in London. The first book sounded interesting and there’s supposed to be enough information to keep a newcomer from getting lost in this installment, so I’d like to read this one, too. The Midnight Mayor is coming out in hardcover on March 8, although it’s already in stock on Amazon.

It’s said that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, then the Tower will crumble and the kingdom will fall. As it happens, that’s not so far from the truth…

London faces its gravest threat since the Great Fire, and resurrected sorcerer Matthew Swift is alarmed to find himself thrust into the position of savior. One by one, the magical wards that guard the city are falling: the London Wall defiled with cryptic graffiti, the ravens found dead at the Tower, the London Stone destroyed.

Scattered throughout London, this multitude of magical defenses – a mix of international tourist attractions and forgotten urban legends – add up to a formidable magical shield. Protection for the City of London against . . . well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

If Matthew Swift is lucky, he might just live long enough to find the answer.

The Mage in Black by Jaye Wells

This is the second book in the Sabina Kane series, following Red-Headed Stepchild. I was considering reading this one but from what I read on the author’s website it sounds like it may not be a good idea if you haven’t read the first one, which I don’t have. This book is coming out in April 2010 according to the publisher’s website, but Amazon has it available starting on March 30.

Sabina Kane doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to family. After all, her own grandmother, the leader of the vampire race, just tried to kill her. When she arrives in New York to meet the mage side of her family, the reunion takes the fun out of dysfunctional.

On top of that, the Hekate Council wants to use her as a pawn in the brewing war against the vampires. Her mission will take her into the bowels of New York’s Black Light district, entangles her in mage politics, and challenges her beliefs about the race she was raised to distrust. And Sabina thought vampires were bloodthirsty.

The War of the Dwarves by Markus Heitz

This is the second book in the Dwarves series following The Dwarves. It is by a German author and is a bestseller in Europe, so the series is now being released in the English language. The War of the Dwarves is coming out on March 23.

The mood in Girdlegard is buoyant, but while Tungdil and the dwarves are celebrating their victory over the treacherous Nôd’onn, an army of orcs is heading north, on course for the dwarven kingdom. The sinister magic of the dead glades has lent the orcs an almost supernatural power and Tungdil and his friends must summon all their strength to keep the beasts at bay.

Unbeknownst to them, greater dangers lie ahead: eleven descendants of the dark lord Tion are marching on Girdlegard’s western border, accompanied by an army of warriors. But real dwarves never give in, no matter how bad the odds…


Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime by Mizuki Nomura

This one wins for title and description that made me the most curious. This is the first novel in the Book Girl series (YA books) and it is coming out in July 2010.

For self-styled ‘book girl,’ third-year high school student Tooko Amano, being the head of the literary club is more than just an extracurricular activity with minor perks. It’s her bread and butter …literally! Tooko is actually a literature-gobbling demon, and instead of the less palatable option of water-soaked bread, she opts to munch on torn out pages from all kinds of stories. But for Tooko, the real delicacies are handwritten stories. And to satisfy her gourmet tastes, she’s employed (aka. browbeaten) one Konoha Inoue, an underclassman who has retreated from writing novels after his experiences with getting published at an early age. So day in and day out, Konoha scribbles away to satisfy Tooko’s appetite. But when, one day, another student comes knocking on the literary club door to seek advice on writing love letters, will Tooko discover a new kind of delicacy to whet her voracious appetite?


Whew! That one took a while to put together. So are there any books in particular you’d like to see reviewed from that list?