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Yzabel / August 9, 2015

Review: The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl

The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl: From the Peculiar Adventures of John Lovehart, Esq., Volume 2 by Ishbelle Bee

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

A dark and twisted Victorian melodrama, like Alice in Wonderland goes to Hell, from the author of The Singular & Extraordinary Tale of Mirror & Goliath.

Two orphans, Pedrock and Boo Boo, are sent to live in the sinister village of Darkwound. There they meet and befriend the magical and dangerous Mr Loveheart and his neighbour, Professor Hummingbird, a recluse who collects rare butterflies. Little do they know that Professor Hummingbird has attracted the wrath of a demon named Mr Angelcakes.

One night, Mr Angelcakes visits Boo Boo and carves a butterfly onto her back. Boo Boo starts to metamorphose into a butterfly/human hybrid, and is kidnapped by Professor Hummingbird. When Mr Loveheart attempts to rescue her with the aid of Detective White and Constable Walnut, they too are turned into butterflies.

Caught between Professor Hummingbird and the demon Angelcakes, Loveheart finds himself entangled in a web much wider and darker than he could have imagined, and a plot that leads him right to the Prime Minister and even Queen Victoria herself…

Review:

[I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Like the first novel in this series, I had trouble rating this one. Some aspects I really found delightful, while others left me cold.

I loved the “mad” characters’ narratives—Loveheart’s and Heap’s. The way they tell of the events from their point of view, their disjointed thoughts, the apparently random use of capital letters, how they go about killing or maiming while wishing for custard and pursuing so many different musings, all these quite nicely reflected the fact they were all but human. Heap made for a glorious villain, while Loveheart was his lovely psychopathic self. I couldn’t help cheering for him, even though he was basically just as much a monster as his nemesis. Only he didn’t kill on such a large scale. Or did he? With him, you can never tell.

I also liked seeing White and Walnut back in action. They made for a funny duo, from their fumbling steps with the cursed jewel that sent them to Wales, to how they always ended up in dire straits due to being somewhat silly. In other circumstances, I’d file them as Too Stupid To Live; however, the tone here being clearly humorous and tongue-in-cheek, it left room for that, and it was alright.

On the other hand, a lot of the other characters were either quickly dispatched or barely etched, and very little development happened in that regard (though Mrs Charm and her medieval horror novels were amusing—I’d definitely read those if they existed, I mean, come on, “The Cannibal Bishop of Edinburgh” is a winning title, isn’t it?). I would’ve wanted Boo Boo, more specifically, to be more fleshed, as she was an intriguing girl, considering how and where she was brought up.

The action felt disjointed in some parts, which was fitting when it came to Loveheart, but caused the story to be stuck at times on killing and severed heads flying in the room, but little else. The ending dragged a little, too, the very last chapter opening towards a third novel, yet the ones in between taking maybe just wee bit too long to close up the remaining characters’ storylines.

Overall, a somewhat over-the-top novel that manages to make light of dark situations, with a charming twist of language, even though its rhythm itself was uneven. 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / August 3, 2015

Review: Way Down Dark

Way Down Dark: Australia Book 1 by James Smythe

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

There’s one truth on Australia.

You fight or you die.

Usually both.

Imagine a nightmare from which there is no escape.

Seventeen-year-old Chan’s ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. They never found one.

This is a hell where no one can hide.

The only life that Chan’s ever known is one of violence, of fighting. Of trying to survive.

This is a ship of death, of murderers and cults and gangs.

But there might be a way to escape. In order to find it, Chan must head way down into the darkness – a place of buried secrets, long-forgotten lies, and the abandoned bodies of the dead.

This is Australia.

Seventeen-year-old Chan, fiercely independent and self-sufficient, keeps her head down and lives quietly, careful not to draw attention to herself amidst the violence and disorder. Until the day she makes an extraordinary discovery – a way to return the Australia to Earth. But doing so would bring her to the attention of the fanatics and the murderers who control life aboard the ship, putting her and everyone she loves in terrible danger.

And a safe return to Earth is by no means certain.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Life on the Australia spaceship is hard: the Earth is gone, only handfuls of survivors were sent on such ships through space, in the hopes that someday they’d find a new place to live… but aren’t these travellers way too entrenched in destructive ways to even reach that someday? This is what I found deeply intriguing and nagging in this novel: a strong dichotomy between the goal, the Promised Earth, and how the ship’s people were getting to it. Telling myths and stories about their origins… yet living almost day to day only, as if not hoping in anything else anymore. Some of them taking care of their arboretum and their few other sources of goods… yet others bent on destroying, conquering, killing, razing down whatever they could, just because they could. Trying to survive by scrapping out metal and other bits of the ship. And all the while, those colonists remained trapped in their own microcosm, unable—or unwilling—to do more than that, their world torn between various gangs.

This is when you know that the society Chan’s living in is completly upside down, and that something has gone terribly wrong. And the twist, although there are several hints and it’s not so difficult to guess, pretty much fits.

Chan was a likeable enough protagonist: headstrong, wanting to help others, but not immune to bits of selfishness and cowardice, as she was trying to keep her promise to her mother (“don’t die”). Not a perfect girl, not a special girl, but one who knew from the beginning she wasn’t a special snowflake and that her only way of ensuring her survival was to bank on her mother’s reputation and make it her own, using tricks and carefulness. The choices she made could’ve been made by many, many people: can you decide who to save when you do have some power (fighting…), only it’s obvious you’ll just never have enough? However naive some of her choices seemed to be, Chan tried to do what she felt was right by her fellow dwellers on the ship. She had a nice balance of good and bad sides, bringing humanity into chaos and madness. She could easily have let herself become a Rex, but she really tried not to. And she didn’t spend most of the story swooning over some guy(s), which is always a nice change.

I liked the violent, brutal society depicted here, even though as far as world building goes, it was stretched rather thin. However, this was partly justified by how many decades, centuries had passed since the ship had left Earth: history decayed into gritty myth, and without much guidance, the minds of the people themselves started “decaying” as well. Though it may be seen as simplistic, it was also logical, all things considered, and was a good way of illustrating how narrow the world of the survivors had become.

On the other hand, the pacing of the story was a really problematic element for me. While it was necessary to illustrate how harsh life was on the Australia, the various events in Chan’s life became redundant: be careful, try to work, barter, climb the gantries, escape the Lows, hide, climb up and down, hide some more, fight, get wounded, hide again, fight and get wounded again… After a while, it felt like filling between the strong starting point (Riadne’s death) and the “big reveal”—and in a book that isn’t so long, it’s kind of annoying. This is why I’m not giving it a full 4 stars.

The end, too, brings closure to this first part of the trilogy (yay), but its cliffhanger was annoying nonetheless.

A pleasant read, one that kept me coming back to it, and that I liked overall. In the long run, I don’t know if it’s going to be that much more original than a lot of other dystopian YA stories out there. The ending seems to open towards something very different… or maybe not so? We’ll see, we’ll see.

3.5 stars.

Yzabel / July 30, 2015

Review: Time Salvager

Time Salvager by Wesley Chu

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

In a future when Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humanity has spread into the outer solar system to survive, the tightly controlled use of time travel holds the key maintaining a fragile existence among the other planets and their moons. James Griffin-Mars is a chronman–a convicted criminal recruited for his unique psychological makeup to undertake the most dangerous job there is: missions into Earth’s past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. Most chronmen never reach old age, and James is reaching his breaking point.

On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets an intriguing woman from a previous century, scientist Elise Kim, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, James brings her back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, and discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity’s home world.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

There were quite a few good concepts in there. The psychological and physical side-effects of time travel, that basically placed a lot of people in ChronoCom not exactly on the right side of sanity. The use ChronoCom was put to, with the “salvages” quickly starting to look more like pillaging than anything else. The different phases humanity went through, from the exuberant utopian mindset of Nutris to the Technological Isolationists to the Big Brother-ish Publicae Age.
The novel also had room for character development: James and his growing sense of guilt, Elise’s adaptation to her new world, Smitt’s and Levin’s choices… And bonus points for Grace Priestly, the snarky old lady, badass in her own ways, who made me smile from the start.

Unfortunately, although interesting at first — it definitely grabbed me during the first 10-15% or so — the story quickly lost its momentum, and ended up feeling more like a series of events, sometimes even fillers, than like an actual plot. A lot of what looked like good ideas veered a little too much towards clichés (the villainish Corporations, the “nice savages”…), and I was baffled, too, that ChronoCom in general didn’t manage to track James more quickly: granted, he had tools and a stealthy ship, but I would’ve expected their means were more efficient than his, considering the help they had.

The characters in general didn’t exactly develop much past a certain point, or made strange choices. (Levin, I’m looking at you — OK, maybe not so strange, but terribly counter-productive, unless there’s a plan in the making for book 2 here?) The dialogues were sometimes repetitive and annoying, and the writing style tended to tell a lot more than it showed. This made a lot of scenes and character interactions rather dry, action scenes included.

One thing that I didn’t like and that deserves being mentioned: including small cliffhangers at the end of a chapter—and then starting the next chapter *after* the cliffhanger was resolved. Those events managed to look like small fillers *and* cop-outs at the same time, because the reader doesn’t get to see how exactly the characters managed to solve the crisis. That was… definitely annoying.

Conclusion: a fairly interesting initial idea, but in the end, I found the execution unfortunately lacking. 1.5 to 2 stars.

Yzabel / July 29, 2015

Review: Collected Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi

Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

Inside the firewall the city is alive. Buildings breathe, cars attack, angels patrol, and hyper-intelligent pets rebel.

With unbridled invention and breakneck adventure, Hannu Rajaniemi is on the cutting-edge of science fiction. His post-apocalyptic, post-cyberpunk, and post-human tales are full of exhilarating energy and unpredictable optimism.

How will human nature react when the only limit to desire is creativity? When the distinction between humans and gods is as small as nanomachines—or as large as the universe? Whether the next big step in technology is 3D printing, genetic alteration, or unlimited space travel, Rajaniemi writes about what happens after.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A few months ago, I read Hannu Rajaniemi’s first two installments of “The Quantum Thief”: not so easy to follow novels, but unique in their own right, because of their fascinating blend of science and, dare I say, poetry.

These short stories are a little easier to follow, while retaining this quality, as well as first sentences that almost always manage to pique my interest, combining as they do totally different elements. Typical example: “Before the concert, we steal the master’s head.” We often hear or read that first sentences and first pages are important to grab a reader’s attention, and I think this author manages to do that very well here.

Most of those stories kept me enthralled, although not always for the same reasons. Some of them were clearly set in a distant enough future that men had become digital gods, or launched starships meant to drop servers into spaces just like one would plant seends, aiming to create a network spanning entire galaxies. Other stories felt closer to contemporary times, while toying with Finnish myths and legends (Tuoni…). Not to mention the inclusion of Edinburgh: I very often derive pleasure just from reading about a city I know well and/or live in.

Generally speaking, I would divide these stories into three (somewhat loose) categories:

– The exploring of technology, pushed back to its limits and beyond, and what it means to be a sentient being in such a world. I use the words “beings” here on purpose, since not all protagonists are human: “His Master’s Voice” features two extremely enhanced and intelligent pets, and is narrated by the dog itself. Brilliant.

The same applies to “The Server and the Dragon” (a lone server growing in space, questioning its own purpose), “Deux Ex Homine” (the story of one who briefly embraced a plague turning people into digital deities), “Elegy for a Young Elk”, or “Invisible Planets” (where the protagonist is, in fact, a ship).

“Skywalker of Earth” has its own charm, in between a contemporary alien invasion adventure and a pulp serial—considering the people who initiated the conflict in it, and when they did it (1930s pseudo-science). I also really liked the idea of going open source in order to pool all resources available and fight back.

Certainly closer to our own time period, “Topsight” deals with what’s left of people in the digital world after their death, while “The Jugaad Cathedral” explores the meaning of living in a digital world, most specifically a MMORPG, vs. embracing the “real” world, and blurs boundaries between both.

The one I didnt like so much was “Shibuya no Love”, because its portrayal of Japan and its inhabitants felt too close to caricature. It was probably on purpose, but it didn’t work for me.

– The mythical-tinged stories: “Fisher of Men” (includes Iku-Turso), “The Viper Blanket” (with its bizarre family following ancient rites), “The Oldest Game”…

– The others: “Paris, In Love”, “Ghost Dogs”, or “Satan’s Typist”. The first one was close to urban fantasy, in that the City in it really took on a life of its own. The other two are more the horror-infused type—the ghost dogs especially echoed Gaiman’s wolves in the wall for me.

Definitely a unique collection, one that I will recommend without fear of the science thrown in: maybe the concepts will be lost on some (I won’t pretend I understood absolutely everything either), but it doesn’t really matter. Context, feelings and ideas largely make up for it, allowing to mentally draw a bigger picture in every case.

Yzabel / July 27, 2015

Review: The Floating City

The Floating City by Craig Cormick

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

The Floating City is in turmoil. The magical seers who protect it are being killed by fearsome Djinn that rise out of the canals at night. Members of the city’s Council of Ten are being assassinated by masked fanatics. Refugee ships are arriving, bringing plague. Othmen spies are infiltrating everywhere. New power blocks are battling for control of the city.

And the three Montecchi daughters, Giuliette, Disdemona and Isabella, are struggling with love and loss – and trying to write their own destinies. And moving amongst them all is the mysterious and deadly Shadow Master, who seems to be directing everyone like players in a game. But some things in this game may be beyond even his control.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Last year, I read the first installment of this series, The Shadow Master. I liked it and found it really confusing at the same time. I’d say that things are a little similar here, but that knowing the works that the author plays with (Romeo & Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello…) helps in guessing a few things… and being misled when it comes to others, in a good way. I could both anticipate and still be surprised in the end.

This novel is more intricate than the first one, since it weaves the stories of the three Montecchi sisters along with those of the Shadow Master and Vincenzo, a young scribe with a strange power of making events happen differently by (re)writing them, a really powerful ability in its own right. These retellings from Shakespeare’s plays—and from the tales that inspired them—were fairly interesting: close enough, yet also subtly different, with a dash of humour as well. Mostly it worked for me, although there were a few instances in which the dialogues were, oddly enough, “too” Shakespearian, and clashed slightly with the way the characters spoke in general.

The city itself felt very present, much like in the first book. The atmosphere was more magical and poetic this time, through the depiction of a Venice-like city kept afloat by the powers of four couple of mages called the Seers, facing strange creatures in its waters, a plague, the looming threat of the Ottomans (Othmen), and a shady group of assassins taking down the Council members one by one. This is mostly where things felt confusing sometimes, because a lot was at stake, and the explanation at the end behind those events was too hasty, too convenient, perhaps. This is also where I would’ve liked the novel to be longer, to expand more on the Seers, on how their magic worked (pretty shady as well in its own way!), and on some of the “background characters”, so to speak.

However, paradoxically, the events surrounding the Shadow Master and Vincenzo, as confusing as they may seem, started shedding some light on events and characters from the first novel—especially when a certain couple was concerned. Though I may be mistaken, I have a gut feeling that the author is building something here, something far bigger than I had suspected at first: a sort of network of plots meant to collide at the very end, with the Shadow Master acting both as a hero/assassin and a storyteller, gifted with abilities that go deeper than suspected at first. I cannot deny, too, that the Shadow Master sometimes had a Fool’s flavour to him (as in a Shakespearian Fool), which I don’t doubt was totally on purpose. If only for that, combined to how I enjoyed the story, I shall make it a 3.5 stars, bumped to 4. I definitely hope my hunches are correct.

Note: I found some typos here and there; however, the copy I got was an ARC, therefore not the final one, and I’ll assume those few defects will have been ironed out by now.

Yzabel / July 26, 2015

Review: Pawn Shop

Pawn Shop by Joey Esposito

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Pawn Shop is an original graphic novel about the intertwining lives of four strangers in the ecosystem of New York City, connected by the streets they walk on and the people they touch. Following a lonely widower, a struggling Long Island Railroad employee, a timid hospice nurse, and a drug-addled punk, Pawn Shop explores the big things that separate us and the little moments that inexplicably unite us.

Written by Joey Esposito (Footprints) and drawn by Sean Von Gorman (Toe Tag Riot), Pawn Shop is a slice-of-life tale that weaves together separate lives to celebrate the ever-changing nature of New York City and the people that make it the greatest city in the world.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Four people in New York, whose lives intersect, briefly connect, are more or less related to each other, through a common denominator: a simple pawn shop, in which old memories come to life, long-lost items surface again, from one hand to the other, for various reasons. Some honest, some not. Some out of need, some just by chance.

Harold, Arthur, Jen and Samantha all live different lives, coming from different backgrounds, but all marred with regrets. Regrets about not proposing sooner to a wife who died too soon after the wedding. About not daring confessing to the person who matters most. About letting someone else control your life because of just one bit of leverage. About trying to do what’s best for your family, to the point of neglecting your own life—yet you cannot let go, and if you do, guilt is only waiting at the corner.

I didn’t enjoy the art, I admit, but the stories were interesting, as well as the way they connected: through just enough little coincidences, but not enough to look as if they were too many or too unbelievable. For instance, it wasn’t illogical for Samantha to meet or at least see those people who always travelled the same subway line at the same time every day. For Arthur to see her, since he worked as a nurse to help her ailing brother. Or even for Jen to bump into Harold upon exiting the pawn shop.

I may have liked to see a little more about their lives, especially Jen’s, as her boyfriend implied that one word from him could destroy her life (in the end, we won’t know if he did or not). Or maybe there’ll be a second volume to tell us more about these characters? I don’t know. It both feels pretty complete as is it, with this “want” more a whim on my part than out of any fault of the book.

Fairly interesting, in any case, and very touching when it came to human feelings and how even little things can cause a lot of changes to happen. Changes that are life-altering, though not necessarily in a grand way: subtlety can have just as much weight, after all.

3.5 stars.

Yzabel / July 25, 2015

Review: Tortured Life

Tortured Life by Dan Watters

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Richard is having a bad year. He’s lost his job, lost his girlfriend, put on weight… and developed the ability to see the deaths of everyone around him. Plagued by horrific premonitions, he decides to end it all, but there are old and powerful forces at work that have their own plans for his power. Pitched into a world of eldritch horror that lurks just beneath the surface of London’s civilized veneer, the only chance Richard has of finding peace is to unravel the mysteries of his own past. He’s having a really, really bad year.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A harsh but fascinating story about Richard, a young man who’s able to see how people around him will die. It starts with animals, then expands to everybody he meets, ending up in him retreating from the world and the horrors he keeps seeing. Until the day he meets Alice, and crosses path with the Bloodyman, leaving a trail of dead people behind him.

This comic book weaves several themes, not only death and the ability to see it; scientific experiments are one of those, and while this may seem like an odd mix at first, the plot manages to gather them all up in a way that actually makes sense. It is terrifying and bittersweet; bringing slivers of hope, only to have them smothered by more despair and helplessness. Richard struggles to understand what’s happening to him, yet every time a bit is unveiled, something or someone else is taken from him, until only the dead remain. The dead, and truth.

I also liked that the beginning doesn’t dwell too long on what Richard’s life had been before: just enough to see what he lost, and how he then started losing himself, before everything starts going down the drain for good.

Although the artwork is sometimes stiff, it still definitely conveys all the gruesomness of death, murder, dismembered bodies and rotting guts. The Bloodyman is creepy as hell, humming tunes as he goes about killing again and again, clearly methodical in the madness he’s lost himself in long ago. The bittersweet ending may or may not be a good thing; personally, I quite liked it, as I wasn’t sure what other outcome could have sprung out of this story (at least, a totally happy ending didn’t seem fitting).

3.5 stars, rounded to 4.

Yzabel / July 24, 2015

Review: Abomination

Abomination by Gary Whitta

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

He is England’s greatest knight, the man who saved the life of Alfred the Great and an entire kingdom from a Viking invasion. But when he is called back into service to combat a plague of monstrous beasts known as abominations, he meets a fate worse than death and is condemned to a life of anguish, solitude, and remorse.

She is a fierce young warrior, raised among an elite order of knights. Driven by a dark secret from her past, she defies her controlling father and sets out on a dangerous quest to do what none before her ever have—hunt down and kill an abomination, alone.

When a chance encounter sets these two against one another, an incredible twist of fate will lead them toward a salvation they never thought possible—and prove that the power of love, mercy, and forgiveness can shine a hopeful light even in history’s darkest age.

Review:

[I received an ARC through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A somewhat entertaining read with good ideas and a somber atmosphere, oozing despair, but also bits of hope at times. Unfortunately, I found it a bit too dry when it came to the characters and their actions, “telling” more than “showing” how they were, acted and felt.

The premise was interesting: a dark, dark age, with King Alfred trying to protect his kingdom against the invader, so full of despair that he ends up resorting to one man and the latter’s inhuman means of winning. Obviously, that sorcery turns sour, and the king has to send Wulfric, his best knight and friend, on the hunt for former Archbishop Aethelred and his army of abominations. My opinions on that part were mixed: I thought the hunt went on too quickly, somehow. On the other hand, it wasn’t the main focus of the story, or rather, it was only its first focus, so it’s a good thing that it didn’t take half the book either to be sorted.

The abominations, the sorcery that gave birth to them, were truly horrific, and I had no trouble picturing them, imagining the horror they must’ve been for the characters. These creatures had a sad side, too, being twisted without any possibility to fight back nor to revert to their original selves.
Historical accuracy wasn’t always this book’s forte. At times I could suspend my disbelief; at others, not at all (would anyone get rid of a dagger in a time where metal was quite precious, all the more with enemies being so close?). This happened when it came to language as well, with some names being really strange for that place and time (Indra…). As a story with action, it was alright, but let’s not too closely at the historical side here.

While the characters had to face challenges and trials that had some nicely ambiguous sides (Edgard’s motives were not pure, but neither were they completely evil), I didn’t really feel any connection with them. The revelations they had to come to terms with and the introspection needed from them seemed at times off-pace, at odds with other aspects of the story. I could also guess from the beginning what the twist about Indra would be, which was a bit disappointing: it couldn’t be kept a mystery from me, so when it was officially revealed, it just fell flat. (Indra herself was interesting, though, for the way she wanted to decide for herself, live the life she had chosen, not caring about whether being a woman would bar her from figthing, and also her decision to give a chance to the Beast.)

Conclusion: good ideas and vivid descriptions of the abominations, but not enough in terms of character strength to hold my attention.

Yzabel / July 22, 2015

Review: The House of Shattered Wings

The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

In the late Twentieth Century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins. The Great Magicians’ War left a trail of devastation in its wake. The Grand Magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France’s once grand capital.

Once the most powerful and formidable, House Silverspires now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen angel; an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction; and a resentful young man wielding spells of unknown origin. They may be Silverspires’ salvation—or the architects of its last, irreversible fall. And if Silverspires falls, so may the city itself.

Review:

[I received an ARC through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I liked the premise, I really did—not to mention that theme of the broken, rotting throne at night against the backdrop of a ruined Paris. There’s something both sick and magical to such a city. The Seine river blackened and polluted by magic turned sour, horrors lurking in its waters. Gangs scrapping remnants in order to survive, Fallen angels being their favourite preys, preys that end stripped up of blood and bone and basically everything, for the power those organs can bring. Houses full of mages, Fallens and their dependents, vying for domination, yet also teetering on the brink of destruction, for the last large-scale conflict among them ended up being the 1914 war, the Great War nobody nor any place in the world seems to have recovered even 60 years later…

Yes. Definitely enchanting, in a morbid way. I couldn’t help but be fascinated by this charred landscape, by the sheer hopelessness permeating eveything and everyone, despite the pseudo-grandeur some of the characters tried to keep as their facade. Descriptions here worked pretty well for me, making it easy to create this picture of Paris in my mind, all the more because I’ve walked those places, the parvis of Notre-Dame, the Halles, and so on. The atmosphere was somewhat old-fashioned, in that people in the story clung to a world long gone by (far away colonies entangled in the War, displays from fashion stores back when everything was still gilded…), and a lot of names were really traditional French names (Ninon, Madeleine, Isabelle, Philippe…). Although, as a native French speaker, it was also somewhat weird to see those names associated to English ones like Silverspires or Morningstar; that’s a matter of language on my part, though, and not any fault of the book.

And no romance. There was no room for that here. The only “links” were of blood and curses and magic and slavery of sorts. No “souls destined to be together”. The relationship between Philippe and Isabelle definitely wasn’t born under the brightest star, so to speak.

The reason why I’m not rating this novel higher is because… I wanted more. The mystery, the curse, those were intriguing, but the balance between unveiling them, developing the characters and showing the world around them was regularly a bit off. I would have wanted to see more interaction between Philippe, Isabelle and Madeleine; see more about how they evolved, or rather, could have evolved as people. I expected to see more of House politics, of the complex webbing of alliances and betrayal and various other ways of pecking at each other. More about Philippe’s origins and what his presence in Paris meant, more questioning about immortality and fallen angels, perhaps? At times, I felt that all that was more akin to beating around the bush, and that a while elapsed with nothing really happening, neither in terms of events nor of character growth. That while would’ve been the perfect place to inject… well, “more”.

I was also not too convinced by some of the secondary characters, more specifically Selene. I expected more cunning on her part, as someone who had been playing the game of House politics for decades. As a Head of House, she wasn’t “older” than Asmodeus, yet the latter and his schemes hooked me much more, seemed more ruthless and thus believable. I got it, nobody could have equalled Morningstar, but…

All in all, this is still an “I liked it” book. Just not the “I’m in awe” story I had hoped for.

Yzabel / July 15, 2015

Review: Dark Run

Dark Run by Mike Brooks

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

The Keiko is a ship of smugglers, soldiers of fortune and adventurers, travelling Earth’s colony planets searching for the next job. And nobody talks about their past.

But when a face from Captain Ichabod Drift’s former life send them on a run to Old Earth, all the rules change.

Trust will be broken, and blood will be spilled.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

This was a nicely-paced and fun read, in the vein of space cowboys/pirates/smugglers branch of sci-fi. More plot- and ambiance- than character-driven, but what I wanted to read when I requested this book was a romp in space with action, blazing guns, spaceships, fishy cargoes, crazy pilots and mercenaries… and this is exactly what I got.

The crew members of the Keiko find themselves embroiled into a mission for someone they don’t know. Only Captain Drift knows, and he didn’t accept so willingly, as the one who made the offer was obviously not a friend. While the motto on the ship is “nobody asks about your past”, some pasts are harder to forget and hide than others, and when everything turns to quagmire—because it always does, it always must, in such stories—and old secrets start surfacing back, everything gets tenser and tenser. What is more important, in the end: getting mad at the captain… or getting even when it comes to the mysterious employer?

While I wrote that this novel wasn’t exactly character-driven, it’s not completely true. I’d have to say that the characters are more of archetypal varieties that fit well into such stories. Think à la Firefly. The smooth-talking captain whose skill with words makes him an asset just as much as it causes him trouble. The stone-faced sniper/gunwoman who picked quite a few extra skills in her past. The mercenary going where the money is, but also wondering if it wouldn’t be time to retire. The pilot bailed out of jail and now earning her keep by flying the ship through maneuvers so hard nobody else would try them. The ex-gang member trying to keep his temper in check after it destroyed his life. And so on.

On the one hand, it made them somewhat flat, in that they had too much to do to fully reveal a lot about themselves. On the other hand, interspersed within the various plot points were still bits of information about who they were and/or had done. Even Jenna’s past, which is barely brushed upon, held a couple of hints. It may or may not be interesting, depending on what one would expect; however, for the kind of story I wanted to read when I picked the book, these characters still worked well. I also quite liked that they all reacted differently to Drift’s secret being exposed, yet still considered the biggest picture.

The setting itself was fun as well: again, archetypal, yet in a good way, with shady stations on asteroids, as well as more exotic planets pitched against Old Earth and its European and US “blocks” and air space crammed full of shuttles. Mostly the places the characters had to go to had a “feeling” of their own, with a gritty side for some, and a more noble one for others.

I admit I still would have wanted to know more about the characters, and to get to see a little further than the epilogue, as the gambit the crew took was really dangerous, and could have been exposed at any moment. In that regard, events were maybe just a bit too convenient for them, even though Jenna’s skills as a hacker did help a lot in planting information where it was needed to minimise the risks. This may very well warrant a second story of its own, where the crew would have to deal with the aftermath.

But, all in all, this book was a fun read, and this is what I’ll remember of it.

3.5 to 4 stars.