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Yzabel / June 11, 2016

Review: Jane Steele

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Like the heroine of the novel she adores, Jane Steele suffers cruelly at the hands of her aunt and schoolmaster. And like Jane Eyre, they call her wicked – but in her case, she fears the accusation is true. When she flees, she leaves behind the corpses of her tormentors.

A fugitive navigating London’s underbelly, Jane rights wrongs on behalf of the have-nots whilst avoiding the noose. Until an advertisement catches her eye. Her aunt has died and the new master at Highgate House, Mr Thornfield, seeks a governess. Anxious to know if she is Highgate’s true heir, Jane takes the position and is soon caught up in the household’s strange spell. When she falls in love with the mysterious Charles Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him – body, soul and secrets – and what if he discovers her murderous past?

Review:

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

I have a weak spot both for retellings and for “Jane Eyre”, so no wonder I’d request this novel. And it turned out to be fairly interesting, although it’s more “inspired by” than an actual “retelling”, and at times my attention waned a little—not sure if it’s because of the book or just me being myself, that is, with the attention span of a dead amoeba. Also, I don’t why, I had forgotten that the novel was set in the 19th century, and was surprised at first that it wasn’t set in some contemporary UK. Dead amoeba, I tell you.

Jane Steele, who incidentally is an avid re-reader of the original “Jane Eyre” story, is, like her heroine, an orphan surrounded with a hostile family that mocks her at best and generally despises her. Her mother being an artist and a laudanum-addict doesn’t exactly help. However, unlike Jane Eyre, Miss Steele early enough takes matters into her own hands by despatching those who are in her way. These aren’t just random murders committed by a psychopath, though, and her victims aren’t exactly goody-two-shoes. Jane is actually trying to protect the people she really loves, not obeying some dark unexplained instincts. And so this brings quite a few questions about whether killing might be seen as “justified” in some cases, or not? After all, so many people kill others in wars, and it’s seen as “justified” and not “murder” because “it’s for your country”… so why wouldn’t “it’s for love” be good enough a reason either?

And there you have it. There are killings in this novel, yet they come second to complex relationships among very different people. Thornfield and his Sikh family. The girls at Lowan School, united in misery through a perverse net of betrayal and friendships disguised as hate (unless it’s the contrary?). Jane and her cousin who could so very well end up raping her. Jane and her mother, and these two and Aunt Patience, because there must be a reason for the latter to despise them so much.

There were a few funny moments, especially when the inspector was concerned—well, I did find them funny, especially with Jane constantly trying to escape him. And I also liked the way assault/rape was handled, as it turns out not so many characters in there blame the lady, and do think instead that, yes, she’s not the one at fault at all.

To be honest, I preferred the first part of the novel, with Jane’s years at school with the other girls. The plot in the second part was nice, but… the pacing and the setting in general were less thrilling (which is too bad, for Sardar and the others provided characters and a setting that screamed “badass”)… not to mention that, in spite of the inclusion of a large cast of Sikh people, in the end what could have broken the typical colonialist/jingoist mould of many Victorian-era stories just didn’t do that. (It’s still about white people finding happiness, and the non-white ones kind of get the shaft.)

As for the romance, of course it was meant to mirror the one in “Jane Eyre”, in a fashion, however I never really felt any chemistry between Jane and Charles: it felt more as if they were destined to end up together because Brontë’s characters did, and not because of their traits as people.

Conclusion: I really liked the beginning, so I’m still giving this book 3 stars. The second half and ending didn’t do much for me, though.

Yzabel / June 7, 2016

Review: Dear Amy

Dear Amy by Helen Callaghan

My rating: [rating=1]

Blurb:

Margot Lewis is the agony aunt for The Cambridge Examiner. Her advice column, Dear Amy, gets all kinds of letters – but none like the one she’s just received:

Dear Amy,
I don’t know where I am. I’ve been kidnapped and am being held prisoner by a strange man. I’m afraid he’ll kill me.
Please help me soon,
Bethan Avery

Bethan Avery has been missing for years. This is surely some cruel hoax. But, as more letters arrive, they contain information that was never made public. How is this happening? Answering this question will cost Margot everything . . .

Review:

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

Entertaining but not much more than that, I’m afraid. I liked reading this novel, only the mystery wasn’t so deep, and I kept wondering why other characters didn’t challenge this or that plot point more.

It started well enough with Margot, our narrator, struggling in her personal life: her ex-husband wants the house, she’s pondering her own anxiety-related issues (not to mention “shouldn’t I go off my meds now that I’m feeling better?), and one of her former students has vanished in strange circumstances. On top of her job in posh St. Hilda’s school in Cambridge, she also manages an agony aunt column, “Dear Amy”, in a local newspaper. So when letters are sent to her mailbox at said newspaper, from a girl who was abducted and probably killed some twenty years ago, this only adds to Margot’s confusion, while nevertheless pricking her curiosity. There could be a life at stake here… and perhaps even more.

The original abductee, Bethan Avery, was never found, and it’s clearly weird for her to be writing letters, all the more because, from their tone, it seems she’s still captive! So is she a victim, or an accomplice? I thought this was quite a challenging premise. I still think it is. However, two issues arose while I was reading:

1/ I found it easy enough to guess the outcome of the mystery around Bethan.
2/ This part of the novel led to several plot holes that were never filled. For instance, it was never made clear whether the police tested the letters for fingerprints, and too many people either dismissed them as a prank, or didn’t wonder enough about how Bethan-the-captive-girl could’ve sent them. As a result, it diminished their importance, made the whole thing seem far-fetched, and I think that’s part of what allowed me to sense what was wrong here, and take an eductaed guess (turned out I was right).

My other gripes in general concerned:
– How the characters weren’t so much fleshed out as placed there like “token psychological thriller chars” (the psychologist, the potential love interest who helps the narrator…);
– The handling of mental disorders, both through the narrative and through other chars (that Greta psychologist was rather inept);
– Some cliché plot devices, like the culprit’s actions (creepy but could’ve been handled better), or both landline AND mobile phone cut at the same time (is GSM cover so bad around Cambridge, and do all batteries die so quickly? I never kill mine like that, and that’s after spending commuting time playing games on it…);
– And, to be honest, I didn’t really connect with Margot or anyone else in the novel. Mostly they were too infuriating, in one way or another, and didn’t redeem themselves much through other actions or personality traits.

That said, I liked parts of the second main arc (the abducted girl one). It highlighted the plight of all the murdered girls, as well as Bethan’s. It allowed for a thrilling intruder-in-the-hope scene. Its ending was sort of predictable, but somehow that didn’t matter too much, because it’s kind of what I wanted to read anyway.

On the side of writing: I don’t know if this was because I read an ARC—maybe this was changed in the published version—but often present and past tense mixed in a scene or even a paragraph without the narrative justifying it, and I found this jarring.

1.5 stars? I can’t say I hated this book, but it’s a mix between “OK” and “slight dislike”—I really wish the idea at its root had been handled better…

Yzabel / June 5, 2016

Review: HEX

HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Blind and silenced, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s beds for nights on end. So accustomed to her have the townsfolk become that they often forget she’s there. Or what a threat she poses. Because if the stitches are ever cut open, the story goes, the whole town will die.

The curse must not be allowed to spread. The elders of Black Spring have used high-tech surveillance to quarantine the town. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break the strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into a dark nightmare.

Review:

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

I do love stories set in little towns with secrets, and especially when said secrets are quite “normal” there, and only outsiders would get really shocked about them because the locals have gone… numb and used to them? It’s definitely creepy, and keeps making me wonder when the crap’s going to hit the fan, when the normalcy of horror will become actual horror, when the mask will be thrown away and it’s showtime. Something like that.

Well, at some point it’s showtime in “HEX”, clearly. The only question is “when”.

It starts with a very normal day in the lives of the Normal McNormal family, in Normal Town, USA. Except for the woman who gets crushed by an organ right at the beginning (and that’s when you do a double-take and think “wait, what? I’d better pay more attention to what I’m reading.”). That’s what got me from the start: the feeling that something troubling was was presented as normal, and everybody but me just went about their day without blinking an eye. Soon enough more information surfaces, through other everyday scenes: the Grant family having dinner while a mysterious “Gramma” sits in the next room with a napkin on her head… The council/local organisation policing the town keeping an eye on a couple of newcomers, desperately trying to dissuade them from buying a house in Black Spring. These first chapters were really intriguing and I couldn’t wait to read more.

I didn’t like this novel more, though, because I think at some point, the horror became a little too… close? As in, when you KNOW what’s going to happen, when you KNOW things are going to get very wrong and you suspect how they’re going to unfold, when you start foreseeing such events, there’s always a risk, at least in my case, of distanciating myself from the story in advance. I guess that’s what happened here, and when all the bad things befell various characters, it didn’t creep me out so much anymore. Perhaps that’s just my personal problem with horror stories, and I unconsciously distance myself from their events. Perhaps I don’t do that all the time. It takes a very, very fine and fragile balance to take me where I’d like to be (caring about the characters, feeling invested to the point that every setback for them will be a blow for me).

The normalcy factor and many characters being a bit cliché may also have “helped” in not making me care too much : trying too much killed the effort, so to speak. The Grants look like a too perfect family (the mother doesn’t do much except being the Good Wife, to be honest), the teenagers’ exactions on the witch ended up being more of the sensational-seeking kind than really creepy, the HEX people were forgettable, the new couple settling in town were, in the end, just an excuse to hand out a block of information (they never did anything noteworthy after that)…

Finally, I also felt Katherine’s involvement wasn’t too clear : she’s dangerous but she also was a victim ; there’s a curse but you never know how exactly it started and/or manifests through the witch (“touching her” and “living in Black Spring” are a bit vague); so developments towards the end didn’t make as much sense as would’ve been needed to drive the horror through. As if the plot here kept sitting on the fence, not knowing whether to go the way of humans or monsters. Which is too bad, because there’s that whole theme of “the curse we inflict upon ourselves by forgetting we’re humans and by turning against each other as if we had never learnt anything”.

There were “good” horror moments (the search for the dog at night…) but in the end it was an “OK” book for me, nothing more. 2 to 2.5 stars.

Yzabel / May 29, 2016

Review: White Sand (Volume 1)

White Sand, Volume 1 by Brandon Sanderson

My rating:[rating=2]

Blurb:

A brand new saga of magic and adventure by #1 New York Times best-selling author Brandon Sanderson. On the planet of Taldain, the legendary Sand Masters harness arcane powers to manipulate sand in spectacular ways. But when they are slaughtered in a sinister conspiracy, the weakest of their number, Kenton, believes himself to be the only survivor. With enemies closing in on all sides, Kenton forges an unlikely partnership with Khriss — a mysterious Darksider who hides secrets of her own. White Sand brings to life a crucial, unpublished part of Brandon Sanderson’s sprawling Cosmere universe. The story has been adapted by Rik Hoskin (Mercy Thompson), with art by Julius Gopez and colors by Ross Campbell. Employing powerful imagery and Sanderson’s celebrated approach to magical systems, White Sand is a spectacular new saga for lovers of fantasy and adventure.

Review:

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

First things first, I’ve never read anything by Brandon Sanderson (not yet, at least), so I have no idea if this compares to his novels.

As a comics, it was OK, but I wasn’t awed. Possibly because the PDF version I got was kind of blurry, more certainly because the style was a bit too rough to my liking and because of some things that didn’t make a lot of sense (or were missing) in hindsight when it came to world-building. On one hand, some panels contain a lot of text and explanations, which doesn’t always work too well in a graphic novel; on the other, in spite of those walls of text, little was actually *explained* when it came to all the questions raised.

For instance:
– All the Sandmasters we see are men. I don’t recall any women. Why? Kenton’s mother is mentioned as having come from Darkside, and there’s a point where he wonders about whether he has any brothers “or sisters” left, but where are these sisters? I don’t recall any women anywhere, either among the Sand Masters themselves or back at their enclave, and this just seems… weird. It’s never explained, there isn’t any line, not even one, about women living somewhere else, or not developing powers over sand and thus not studying with the men, etc.
– Re: Darkside and Dayside, the whole dichotomy doesn’t make a lot of sense. The people living under the blazing sun all year long are light-skinned, and the ones living on the presumably “dark side” (no sunlight there, ever? Or are they living in caves?) are dark-skinned. So, sure, I like it when we don’t go with the usual clichés, yet biologically-speaking, and in a science fiction story, it’s not really believable. I could buy, for instance, “drows have dark skin and white hair” in the Forgotten Realms ‘verse Because It’s Magic or their dark goddess making them like that or anything; here, I’d need an actual scientific explanation to be satisfied.

All this to say that, as is often the case when such a problem arises in a world where a scientific basis is expected, things that don’t make sense tend to keep me unfocused on the actual story: as soon as anything new pops up, I always find myself wondering why it is like that, and how it’s supposed to be justified.

The Darksiders have a sort of “19th century British empire” flavour, with their way of seeing the Daysiders as uncouth and not very civilised, and this is a bit problematic (that theme always is): had they been light-skinned people, it would’ve been too close to events that happened in history, but turning the tables here didn’t work too well for me. What I mean by this is that it felt like the author wanted such a civilisation in his story but didn’t want them to be “the civilised white people vs. the dark-skinned savages”, yet at the same time making them dark-skinned clashes with what you’d expect from people living on that “dark side of the planet” all the time. This was weird, and, I don’t know, I guess another option would’ve been more believable?

(This said, I liked them graphically-speaking. The Duchess was stylish and quite amiable, and the items they carry hint at mechanical inventions I wouldn’t mind seeing more.)

Mostly this story was an easy read, with some good fight-and-magic scenes. However, I’m likely to forget about it quickly, to be honest. 2.5 stars.

Yzabel / May 26, 2016

Review: The Fireman

The Fireman by Joe Hill

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital, she witnessed infected mothers give birth to healthy babies and believes hers will be fine too. . . if she can live long enough to deliver the child.

Convinced that his do-gooding wife has made him sick, Jakob becomes unhinged, and eventually abandons her as their placid New England community collapses in terror. The chaos gives rise to ruthless Cremation Squads—armed, self-appointed posses roaming the streets and woods to exterminate those who they believe carry the spore. But Harper isn’t as alone as she fears: a mysterious and compelling stranger she briefly met at the hospital, a man in a dirty yellow fire fighter’s jacket, carrying a hooked iron bar, straddles the abyss between insanity and death. Known as The Fireman, he strolls the ruins of New Hampshire, a madman afflicted with Dragonscale who has learned to control the fire within himself, using it as a shield to protect the hunted . . . and as a weapon to avenge the wronged.

In the desperate season to come, as the world burns out of control, Harper must learn the Fireman’s secrets before her life—and that of her unborn child—goes up in smoke.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

I don’t really know what happened. I guess for now, I’m not with the majority of readers? I thought I’d enjoy this novel much more than I did, and… well, I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t care much about it either. The fact it took me one month to finish it, even though it’s not a complicated book (we’re not talking hard non-fiction university topics here), is proof enough, I guess?

The basic idea was good. Although I found the science behind the Dragonscale is a bit wishy-washy, in itself, it could have worked if the plot had been more… enthralling? It started well enough, with a potential (and loathsome) antagonist almost straight off the bat, and a main character, Harper, who’s a bit of a pushover, but with room to evolve and overall positive features. The story introduced harsh themes, too: for instance, Harper and Jakob had that “contract” that if they were to get infected, they’d die together peacefully, before the Dragonscale burnt them to a crips like it did for all the other infected people. Except that Harper finds out she’s pregnant and infected almost at the same time, and suddenly the choice isn’t so easy anymore—she wants to live, for herself as much as for the baby. Jakob doesn’t agree so much, and that’s where the first batch of crap hits the fan.

The story follows Harper during her pregnancy, as she tries to figure out how to go on, how to survive, who she can entrust her child with once they’re born… As her path crosses with that of the Fireman’s, she finds herself involved with other infected people, and realises that there’s so much more to Dragonscale than meet the eye…

…And from then on, my interested gradually dwindled. I’m not so sure how to explain that. I think it was a mix of events unfolding too slowly (considering the apocalyptic setting), combined with somewhat long-winded writing, characters that remained more one-dimensional, and elements I’m didn’t particularly cared about. Mostly:

– Harper has this thing with Mary Poppins, staying positive, etc. and in the end, even though she was relatively resourceful in general, there wasn’t that much more to her. Father Storey is a nice and probably too naïve man and… that’s all. The Fireman is supposed to be a larger than life figure, but he doesn’t do that much, all things considered, and his influence on the story wasn’t as exciting as the blurb led me to think. The “slightly crazy cult leader” character is just that. Jakob remains just loathsome when he could’ve been a terrifying figure. And so on.

– The cult/camp is a hit-or-miss element for me. I’ve always thought there was something fascinating—well, fascinating like a train-wreck—in those communities centered around one or two leader characters, with everybody foollowing blindly and outsiders/dissenters being shunned, castigated, thrown out, etc. But it just didn’t work so well for me here.

– At times the characters spent too much time debating and discussing instead of being proactive. It was a bit boring.

– The collapse of society itself didn’t always make much sense. Some places have electricity when it’s supposed to be gone and there’s not that much of an explanation. Or cell phones: months later the network’s still up. There was an annoying dichotoomy between the apparent collapse and sudden elements turning out to be working perfectly well when you wouldn’t expect them to anymore.

– I also had a hard time with chapters regularly ending in foreshadowing. As in: “But the CDC team never got to look at it, because by the time August rolled around Portsmouth Hospital was a hollowed-out chimney, gutted by fire, and Dr. Ryall was dead, along with Albert Holmes, Nurse Lean, and over five hundred patients.” (That’s in an early chapter, not too much oof a spoiler, by the way.) So, sure, it’s an apocaplytpic/post-apocalyptic setting, and you do expect people to die and things to go bad… doesn’t mean I want it to be spelled out every time before it happens. Even though I know nothing good will last, I still want to be surprised as to what bad things will happen.

Conclusion: As said, good ideas, especially the way the ‘Scale behaved once one tried to understand how it really worked, but the plot, pacing and characters didn’t made much of an impression on me.

Yzabel / May 23, 2016

Review: The Sign of One

The Sign Of One by Eugene Lambert

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

ONE FOR SORROW, TWO MEANS DEATH.

In the Barrenlands of Wrath, no one dies of old age. Kyle is used to its harsh laws, but the cold-blooded separation of identical twins and execution of the ‘evil twists’ at the Annual Peace Fair shocks him.

When Kyle himself is betrayed, he flees for his life with the reluctant help of Sky, a rebel pilot with a hidden agenda. As the hunt intensifies, Kyle soon realises that he is no ordinary runaway, although he has no idea why. Fighting to learn the hideous truth, their reluctant, conflicted partnership will either save them – or kill them.

Review:

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

2.5 stars. I’m not exactly sure how to rate this novel, because it was entertaining… but nothing I’ve never seen before. I guess I’ve just read too many “dystopian YA” novels to be easily awed?

Good things:
* There’s a romantice arc, but it’s far from being the main focus. The characters don’t act like dumbstruck hormone-governed bodies who’ll place a kiss above the fate of the world.

* The sci-fi background. It could’ve been more developed, sure; however, the “cuckoo” theory was interesting.

* For once the “pocket world” aspect is logical! It’s a dump colony, so it totally makes sense that settlements are gathered in a limited space, and not spread all over the planet. It’s not an entire world that had thousand of years to evolve, and would therefore make me wonder “well what the hell is the rest of this world doing, ignoring what’s happening here?”

* The pacing is fairly even, as in, with a good amount of action vs. quieter moments. Life starts normal, then something happens, then there’s a moment of quiet, then crap hits the fan again… I was never bored reading this story.

Things that didn’t thrill me:

* The world-building: good ideas at its basis, but not really developed later. Although the “normal twin / superhuman twin” idea was nice, I’d have liked to know more about how this all came to be, and how it came one twin developed differently (they’re identical twins, genetically-speaking, so what made the difference, or rather, how is this supposed to be explained?). Or the colonisationg itself: is it a bona fide (small) planet, and what happened to the previous civilisation(s), if any?

* The story is nothing original: tyrant oppressing the masses with the help of his “state police” (the Slayers), executions, a group of rebels fighting against the oppressor… There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when it came to the Saviour’s government.

* Kyle has his whining moments, as well as his TSTL moments. I mean, come on. When you discover that you’re not supposed to be here, and that about everyone will betray you, it doesn’t take a genius to understand what you SHOULD NOT do. Running to do it is… head, meet desk.

* The aforementioned romance: why not… but also why. It feels like it’s mandatory these days. Here, the story could’ve gone its merry way juste as well without it.

Conclusion: Not a “bad” novel, and I honestly think that, a few years ago, I’d have rated it higher. It was mildly entertaining. It just wasn’t more than that for me.

Yzabel / May 21, 2016

Review: Black Magick: Awakening, Part One

Black Magick, Volume 1: Awakening, Part One by Greg Rucka

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

Collecting the first five issues of the critically-acclaimed new series from creators GREG RUCKA (Lazarus, Star Wars: Shattered Empire) and NICOLA SCOTT (Secret Six, Earth-2). Rowan Black is a detective with the Portsmouth PD… and a witch, two aspects of her life she has struggled to keep separate. Now someone is targeting Rowan, someone who knows her secrets and means to expose her… or worse.

Review:

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

3.5 to 4 stars. A fairly good read, containing the first 5 issues of the “Black Magick” series. Portsmouth P.D. Detective Rowan Black is also a witch, one who meets with her coven to practice rituals, and she definitely doesn’t want this other part of her life to bleed into the mundane one. Until a perp reveals he knows so much about her… but she’s never met that man, so what’s happening, who’s after her, and how far are they ready to go to achieve their goals?

The art throughout this comics, both panels and covers, was good. There’s a certain harshness to the characters’ features, showing that this isn’t going to be a nice story, and what’s meant to be frightening and threatening, well, is. Just like her colleagues or her friend Alex, a fellow witch, Rowan appears as a “no nonsense” person, one you’d better not mess up with, even though all these people may be out of their league here… for now. Most panels are also coloured in sepia/black and white washed tones, and when colours are applied, it’s only to highlight very striking moments, involving flames bursting out or spells being cast, and it’s quite impressive. As for the crime scenes panels, they depict well enough the corpses found, the wounds they suffered, and so on. It’s not meant to be pretty, after all.

I’d say the magick here (the rituals, the warding, the gatherings in the forest, etc.) aren’t too original—“mainstream pagan magick” put into pictures—but if you’re willing not to look too much into it, it works within the scope of the story, and it didn’t make me roll my eyes (too much). Sometimes you want authors to go further than that… and sometimes it doesn’t matter that much, all things considered.

Another issue I had was with the characters, because we have more glimpses about them than anything to really chew on. We have the basics (where they live, their jobs, the people they meet), but as *people* with psyche of their own, they still seem a little blank. This first volume reads more as an introduction to them. On the other hand, much like the settlements of a larger plot are put in place here, it may just be that issues 6+ will start delving into this more and more, which I hope. I’d like to know why Rowan seems to be able to do so much more with her magick, but doesn’t. Or how she met Alex the very first time (there are hints very early in the story that these “witches” go through reincarnation cycles or something, and tend to find each other in every new lifetime?).

I’m willing to check the next issues, to see if this is going to happen. If it does, this series will be on its path to its real potential. But there’s also the othe possibility, so… fingers crossed?

Yzabel / May 20, 2016

Review: The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria by Carlos Hernandez

My rating: [rating=4]

Blurb:

A quirky collection of short sci-fi stories for fans of Kij Johnson and Kelly Link

Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken; this collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives. There is a concert pianist who defies death by uploading his soul into his piano. There is the person who draws his mother’s ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall near where she was executed. Another character has a horn growing out of the center of his forehead—punishment for an affair. But he is too weak to end it, too much in love to be moral. Another story recounts a panda breeder looking for tips. And then there’s a border patrol agent trying to figure out how to process undocumented visitors from another galaxy. Poignant by way of funny, and philosophical by way of grotesque, Hernandez’s stories are prayers for self-sovereignty.

Review:

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

Well, this was a pretty original collection of stories, mixing science fiction and fantasy elements against a backdrop of Cuban culture (sometimes with clashes of various, if only generational ones) and magical realism. In this book, you’ll get research centres on space stations, aliens visiting Earth and confronted to ubuesque situations, reality TV shows about hitmen, a piano haunted by the soul of his previous owner, artificial brain implants meant to help people recover from owful brain injuries, giant pandas prodded into mating through robotics, unicorns… Basically, quite a few different ideas here, but all looking, in the end, as perfectly logical and well-integrated. Suspension of disbelief? Totally. (Yes, even when Margaret Thatcher waltzes in.)

The writing style in general was pretty good, bordering on poetic at times, making it easy to picture items (the piano), situations and places. Owing to their cultural background, some characters sometimes spoke in Spanish, or what is close to it; I can’t say whether this is annoying or not, because my own experience with that language, albeit very rusty, was still solid enough to allow me to understand.

My favourite ones:

“Homeostasis”: a take on cybernetics/neural implants and what it may mean in terms of envisioning “the soul”. When half your brain has been taken over by an eneural to help reconstruct your persona and allow you to function again as a full human being, can you be sure the person inside is still the person, and not an artificial intelligence?

“The International Studbook of the Giant Panda”: bizarre, with a dash of humour, a little disturbing, too… but surprisingly enough, past the first “WTF” moment, I realised I was enjoying this story a lot.

“The Macrobe Conservation Project”: disturbing too, in different ways. On a space station, a scientist tries to help preserve a fragile ecosystem based on parasites/symbiants living on corpses. Meanwhile, his son’s only contact with his on-planet family is through robotic versions of his mother and brother.

“American Moat”: when aliens meet the local border patrol… hilarity ensues. And yet, there is something deeply worrying in this story, because it makes you wonder: is humanity really worth it, or are we just stupid bags of meat who’d better be left to rot?

“The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria”: the eponymous title and last story of the book. After his mother’s death, a little boy desperately wants his father to be happy again instead of lonely, and turns to (dark) magic to help him. Bonus for the magical dead cat. Again, there are funny elements in there… but also reallyl touching ones. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And with pigeons.

The other stories were good as well, and none struck me as abysmal—if I had to rate them, they were all 3 stars minimum for me.

As for the cultural backdrop, apart from a couple of heavy-handed pokes at racism, these stories had a natural flow that made the characters appear as well-integrated within their surroundings (whether contemporary Earth or space), even when those weren’t Cuba. I’m not sure how to express what I felt here, but I think it’d be something like: you don’t need to understand this different culture to enjoy these stories, and it doesn’t matter if some themes, character quirks, idioms and/or mannerisms aren’t easy to understand because they’re not yours—they’re part of each story in a natural, logical flow, and while this isn’t “my” culture, it both gave me nice insights into it, while also making me feel like there was no cultural divide. (Hopefully this makes sense.)

4 stars out of 5. I definitely recommend this book.

Yzabel / May 19, 2016

Review: Of Scions and Men

Of Scions and Men by Courtney Sloan

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Geopolitical babysitting while arresting preternatural killers – it’s just the daily grind for Scion Rowan Brady.

Brash and sarcastic, Rowan has sold her life, her career and her very blood to the controlling paranormal ruling class of America, all to make sure her kid brother can eat. Now she uses her powers as a scion to kick the ass of any preternatural creature idiotic enough to break the rules and prey upon humanity without a license. All it costs her is her freedom and a pint or two per week to her new Master.

But juggling her job and duties becomes even tougher when she is tasked with keeping a contingency of diplomats from Canada from getting gnawed on. However, negotiations for an International Blood Exchange are interrupted when bodies start showing up. Now Rowan must rely on her talent and wit to defend the society she despises to save the lives she’s sworn to protect.

But as she stumbles into the truth, she chances becoming a target of not only these killers, but of her own government. With shifters, ghosts, vampires and psychics all watching her, can she stop the killings before she is silenced?

Review:

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

First volume of what seems to be an interesting series. Not the best urban fantasy novel I’ve ever read, sure, but it has political hooks that could very well lead to a few big bangs in the future.

When the world went to the dogs, vampires revealed themselves and stepped in to keep the cattle, sorry, the humans in check—after all, there’s no point in letting your bloodbags kill each other with mass-destruction weapons. Decades later, in the aftermath of that explosive situation, Earth is pretty much governed by said vampires, some of them using more human employees than others, but all determined to keep their own just as much in check. Well, at least in some parts of the world, including the USA, where the DEC (Department of Energy Conservation) sends people patrolling the streets in order to stop rogue vampires from feeding illegally and killing their preys.

Rowan Brady is one such agents, partnered with shapeshifter Lyle, and also the scion of vampire Devon: a human bonded to a vampire, able to use part of his powers, but also never, ever truly alone in her mind anymore. A sure recipe for a clusterfuck, especially since a lot of “purely human” people tend to view scions as blood whores, a lot of scions play the part as well, and Rowan does her best not to become a walking cliché. All for the sake of her little brother Will, after their parents’ sudden death in an accident left them orphaned, and Rowan unable to take part in the Cup (a competition that, depending on her final rank, would have opened her a lot of doors… and conversely).

In general, I quite liked the relationships between Rowan and the male characters. Rowan/Devon bordered more than once on the vampire romance-type relationship, but it never become the infuriating kind of romance that makes me roll my eyes. Devon’s a pretty decent guy, all things considered (even though his “cherie” speech mannerism was annoying, I guess the French in me just finds this a bit silly), playing the social and power-related role that a lot of vampires thrive in, however he never veered into the territory of “domineering alpha-male who abuses his partner/servant”. And when he tries to play white knight and protect his scion by telling her to “stay at home for your own good”? He ends up needing her anyway, and she ends up kicking ass anyway. Then there’s the werewolf pack leader and a fellow DEC agent: a positive alpha male, maintaining his position through benevolence and thought-out decisions, and not strutting around being all “me big strong violent male, me is your boss, female”. Yeah, I am rather tired and jaded when it comes to male characters acting all over the place in very macho ways (or the “I’m dark and dangerous and I’m seducing you through coercion and being rough” type).

On the downside : some info-dumping, and a tendency on Rowan’s part to be slightly exaggerated (too sarcastic and mean at times, too obsessed, too bent on doing things absolutely alone even if it meant running into trouble). Not many other female characters in there either, apart from Nadia who, so there’s a risk of having a more typical woman-surrounded-with-male format in later books. I was also less satisfied when it came to Lyle, because I think there’s a lot more to him than just “flamboyant gay blue jay shifter”—hopefully there’ll be more in the next book ! His relationship with Rowan is sweet, in a “best friend/I have your back” way, and it’d be great to see him more developed: where did he find the strength to make his coming out in a society like his, did anything happen in the past that threatened him or, on the contrary, made him stronger and able to stand up to his peers ? Etc. Finally, I couldn’t care less about Curtis. I can only hope he’ll remain a secondary character, and that he won’t end up being part of some dreaded love polygon.

Conclusion : 3 stars. I found myself wanting to keep reading, and interested enough in the world and its characters. There’s real potential for intrigue, in more political ways than is usually found in urban fantasy. Some of the foundations behind that world, though, are a bit flimsy (at some point you need to exert suspension of disbelief and focus on the “now” rather than the “then” and “why”… but I’ve seen worse), and it could all just as well devolve into cookie-cutter UF. I’ll keep an eye on this series, even if I won’t buy it.

Yzabel / May 18, 2016

Review: Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition

Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition by Phil Brucato

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

“I tell you this: We are Divinity.

Reality is ours to bend. To subvert. To command.
We have that power – all of us.

Not everyone knows what to do with it, or uses it well.
Most of us never realize just what it is we are or how much we can do.

Those of us who do… well, some of us are monsters.
Manipulators. Parasites. Tyrants. Fanatics.

And the rest of us never see that monster in our own mirror, only in the reflections of those folks who are not “us.”

Here’s the truth, though: We are ALL “us.” We are ALL gifted,

We can ALL change the world. Most of us remain asleep.

A blessed few Awaken. Fewer still use that power wisely.
And none without consequences.

And so, reality is up for grabs. Where do you stand?

And will you Fall… or Ascend?”

What’s in it?

• Updated profiles of the Council of Nine Traditions, the Technocratic Union, and the Disparate Crafts… with many unexpected developments.

• An epic history of magick and its factions.

• A compilation and clarification of essential and optional rules, including martial arts, vehicles, hazards, cybernetics, the Otherworlds, and far more besides.

• Overviews of paradigms, practices and tools – the focus of your Art.

• Detailed explorations of the epic concepts involved in Mage.

• Chilling looks at the Nephandi and Marauders.

• The Nine Spheres, plus their Technocratic variants.

• Old favorites and new faces from among the Awakened Ones.

• Reality Zones, Paradox, Quiet, the “coincidental vs. vulgar magick” debate, and far, far more…

• New full color original art by Michael William Kaluta, Echo Chernik, Steve Prescott, Christopher Shy, Larry MacDougall, and other classic Mage artists, as well as classic B&W pieces carefully chosen from the earlier editions.

Review:

I took my sweet, sweet time reading this. it’sa huge book—in terms of pages as well as of weight. Actually, that’s the kind of book that makes me feel like breaking into a church to steal a lectern and respectfully place the latter on a pedestal in my living-room, so that I finally have an appropriate reading spot. Except that the whole act wouldn’t be respectful in many other ways.

Anyway.

I discovered Mage: the Ascension in 1998. Possibly earlier than that, if you count the times I had seen it mentioned in RPG magazines. At the time, I was a representative of that rare breed of young (and incidentally female) Storytellers who intended on doing something with this game, apart from using it as a doorstopper. We used to joke about how you needed to go through a whole tube of aspirin before being able to understand what it was about. And yet, I still wanted to try my hand at it.

I never came back from that experience. Even during the years I had stopped gaming, Mage had never left me, not really.

This game is full of possibilities. Full of ideas. Bursting with potential. It’s all about what you do with it, about viewing the world in so many different ways. About interpreting reqlity about you. About shaping your own reality—as a much needed reminder, too, that reality is what we make of it, mages or no mages, and that at least for some things, for a lot of things, there may come a time when you have to decide: do I want changes to occur, and will I be the driving force behind those changes?

This new edition was a joy to read, from one end to the other. Even some 20 years later, it’s still holding that special place in my little shrivelled black heart.

And I shall blame it henceforth for adding “why not run a Technocracy game” to my long list of “must do’s”