NetGalley Archives - Page 37 of 47

Yzabel / November 15, 2014

Review: Krabat

My rating: 3

Summary:

Krabat, a fourteen-year-old Wendish beggar boy, is summoned in a dream to a mysterious mill. When he awakens, an irresistible force makes him seek out a mill near the village of Schwarzkollm where he becomes apprenticed to the master. He soon discovers that the mill is actually a school for black magic and that he and the mill’s journeymen are virtual prisoners. During the week they do the normal work of the mill, but on Friday nights, the master initiates them into the strange rituals of the Art of Arts. The very first Friday, the master turns Krabat into a raven, a trick the boy quickly learns to do himself.

Krabat completes his apprenticeship, becomes a journeyman and the master’s star pupil in necromancy. But the power his new skills endow him with does not compensate for his loss of freedom. And the more he learns of the mill’s dark secrets, the more determined he becomes to escape from the master’s bondage.

The Satanic Mill is set against the colorful background of seventeenth-century Germany. The story of Krabat’s captive apprenticeship and ultimate victory over the master is an unusual, tension-packed thriller that readers of all ages will find difficult to put down until the last page is turned.

Called a masterpiece by reviewers in Germany, The Satanic Mill was awarded the 1972 German Children’s Book Prize.

Review:

(I got a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I liked this story well enough: it has the definite markings of a fairy tale, somehow reminding me of old legends from my home area. (I’m not German, but we do have our own tales dealing with similar themes, such as clever journeymen who manage to outsmart supernatural beings, etc.)

There was magic in the atmosphere here—no pun intended: though sorcery was obviously a strong theme, indeed, events and descriptions themselves, even of daily activities, always seemed to have been touched by something out of the ordinary. We get to discover this at the same time Krabat does, wondering more and more about his surroundings and why things are the way they are.

The writing style was fairly simple, easy to grasp and prompting imagery in an efficient way. Probably suffering from a “lost in translation” syndrome, though, as it sometimes felt a bit dry. (I tend to avoid judging harshly in such cases, since I wouldn’t be able to compare with the original version.)

The downside (of sorts) is that, as in most fairytales, the characters aren’t too developed, and used more to carry the story on their shoulders than as people with their own lives. For instance, we never get to know the singer’s name[the singer’s name (hide spoiler)], which makes her appear as a symbol more than as a real person. The way the relationship develops is clearly a device, and not believable in terms of “falling in love the natural way”. Also, Krabat and the other guys don’t question the Master’s motives that much, even though they live in fear during a certain period of the year.

It probably works better as a story for younger readers: frightening in parts, but not gory, with darker aspects but “appropriate” morals. However, at the same time, it left me longing for more. The ending was rushed, in my opinion,, and I would have wanted to learn what happened to everyone else afterwards.

Yzabel / November 12, 2014

Review: The Body Electric

The Body Electric by Beth Revis

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

The future world is at peace.

Ella Shepherd has dedicated her life to using her unique gift–the ability to enter people’s dreams and memories using technology developed by her mother–to help others relive their happy memories.

But not all is at it seems.

Ella starts seeing impossible things–images of her dead father, warnings of who she cannot trust. Her government recruits her to spy on a rebel group, using her ability to experience–and influence–the memories of traitors. But the leader of the rebels claims they used to be in love–even though Ella’s never met him before in her life. Which can only mean one thing…

Someone’s altered her memory.

Ella’s gift is enough to overthrow a corrupt government or crush a growing rebel group. She is the key to stopping a war she didn’t even know was happening. But if someone else has been inside Ella’s head, she cannot trust her own memories, thoughts, or feelings.

So who can she trust?

Review:

(I got a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I had planned on reading Across the Universe ages ago, yet never got to it. Instead, I got to this one—which, from what I understand, very loosely alludes to the former. I can confirm, in any case, that not having read Beth Revis’s trilogy won’t be a problem here: the present novel is a standalone, and previous knowledge isn’t mandatory to follow its plot. Although I guess that, like me, you’ll miss a few Easter Eggs.

The story follows Ella, a girl from Malta, who struggles daily to come to terms with how sick her mother is, struck with a degenerative disease for which there is no cure. The only “cure” so far has been developed by Ella’s father; unfortunately, his death put a stop to any improvement in that regard. As a way of relieving some of her pain, Ella’s mother (a scientist as well) has created the Reverie, a system that allows people to relive their best, happiest memories in a dream-like state. But what’s been used so far as a recreational machine only has the potential to be so much more, especially after Ella realises she can link to a “dreamer”, and enter his/her Reverie to spy on and/or manipulate it.

We’re given to see the world through Ella’s prism, which is at times a narrow one, focused, as mentioned above, on what’s left of her family, and also her best friend Akilah (when they manage to communicate with each other, because the other girl is currently serving in the army). Information and world-building are thus done little by little; it’s a method I tend to prefer to large info-dumps, so depending on a reader’s preferences here, it may be a very good thing, or a problem. What I can say: I didn’t feel it difficult to get the bigger idea, even though there were moments I would have want to learn just a little more about the rest of the world, most specificically the “secessionist”, possibly “terrorism-infested” countries. This aspect made the novel feel like your average YA dystopia, but somewhat seemed both exploited and left on the side of the road at the same time.

I found Ella’s quest in general interesting, raising many questions regarding who you can trust, how can you be sure you can trust them, who is who, whether conscience resides in the brain or in the body or is yet something even more impossible to grasp. There were a few nice twists in the book about that. I just regretted the scientific aspect behind those, behind the technologies developed, wasn’t given more of an explanation—I’m not particularly a hardcore fan of hard-science SF, but I like having a little more meat on the bones, so to speak.

Another good thing about Ella: she wasn’t the average girl-falls-for-boy YA heroine. When an unknown, handsome but somehow dangerous-looking guy grasps her wrist to “warn” her about something, she doesn’t fall for his looks, she doesn’t immediately trust him: no, she punches him, which is a reaction far healthier than a lot of crap I’ve read in novels with similar characters. She looks for him for answers, but she does so knowing she may have to betray him afterwards; she’s ready to use him, not because she’s deeply manipulative, but because she’s wary, and aware that if she doesn’t do it, she might fall into a trap. After all, she doesn’t know him, while he keeps claiming the contrary: isn’t that fishy? Those reactions don’t necessarily make for a very likeable character at first, but they seemed to me definitely more believable than girl-falls-in-love-in-five-minutes. (Also there are tinges of insta-love, but they make sense… only explaining why would mean revealing too much.)

About the writing: the author delivers compelling chapters, and avoids the typical pit traps of weird metaphors (I’ve seen my share of those in YA lately…) and purple prose. This works pretty well in a no-nonsense way, and fits with the science fiction aspect.

The last chapters play a little too much on convenient happenings, which spoilt a little my enjoyment of the book. But overall, while not exceptional, I liked it. I’d deem it a 3.5*.

Yzabel / November 9, 2014

Review: The Paper Magician

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.

Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.

An Excisioner—a practitioner of dark, flesh magic—invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Enjoyable as a fast read, but with a few things that prevented me from enjoying it more. I’d give it 1.5 stars.

Because I like talking about good things first: the magic. Granted, it could have been more developed, but I could still get a good enough idea of the possibilities it offered, and of the restrictions imposed by bonding to one material, and one material only. As Ceony discovered what being a Folder involved, I couldn’t help but try to find uses of my own for it: what could I do with paper, could books and stories be used for something else than illusions, and so on. When something spurs my imagination, it’s always good. Paper magic just looked so beautiful. Moreover, I shall confess to a personal (and somewhat perverse, I think) fascination in general with magic linked to the use of flesh, and there were such magicians in there, which made me go all “Yessss! Here it is!”

Another thing I liked was the tone and atmosphere, somewhat whimsical, somewhat innocent, allowing me to discover Ceony’s new life in a “fresh” way. That was a very pleasant side to this novel. The paper dog was just adorable—just like it was a good example of what Folding magic can achieve.

The second part of the book, in which Ceony had to navigate Thane’s heart, left me with mixed opinions. To me, it was both interesting and boring. Fairly interesting in how it dealt with having to face a person’s love and hopes, but also darkness and regrets, in order to find a way out; but boring because the antagonist had struck me as more aggressive in the beginning, and seemed to take her sweet time in there. And I’m still not sure why exactly Thane’s heart was such a prize. For some ritual? Just out of spite? Maybe the answer lies in the second book. I don’t know.

I had a lot of trouble empathising with Ceony. While I could understand her disappointment at being assigned to Folding instead of Smelting, I also thought her pretty whiny in that regard, considering how lucky she had been getting into magic school for starters. Folding over Smelting every day, girl, if this is the key to a better life than what you could expect otherwise! Fortunately she came around at some point, but there were still a few moments when I wondered why a character shown as hard-working and resourceful (she graduated within one year, the shortest time possible) couldn’t wrap her mind faster around all the possibilities. Sometimes, the magic almost felt “wasted” on her.

As for the romance: not impressed. Unrequited, with too many things about the guy. In the end, I didn’t feel like I had gotten to know Ceony that much, as if she only came second. Though her backstory came out now and then, it was always kept at a distance compared to Thane’s, and it was too bad. The girl had her lot of hard experiences, which should have shaped her… yet they didn’t seem to be part of her as much as thrown in there like an afterthought. The rest revolved about Thane. (And Ceony blushed all. the. time. Alright, alright, red-haired people often have fair skin and I suppose fair skin tends to blush, but it was really tiresome after a while.)

Last but not least, the way the (alternate) historical period was tackled was a bit muddled: for quite some time, I wasn’t even sure when exactly the story was set. Quite a few elements looked and sounded too modern for something that, all in all, was supposed to be the early 1900s, and apart from some names, the place did not exactly “feel” like London at the turn of the previous century, either.

Despite those problems, I’ll still read the second book (if only because I also got it from NetGalley, and think I therefore owe it a review), but I hope I’ll like it better.

Yzabel / November 3, 2014

Review: The Book of Strange New Things

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

My rating: [rating=2]

Summary:

It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter.

Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us.

Review:

(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

At first I thought I’d rate this book higher: its beginning as well as premise were quite catchy, and I was fairly intrigued at what Peter, the main character, found on planet Oasis, as well as to what would happen with Beatrice, how they’d keep in contact, whether their relationship would hold, and so on.

There are very strong moments in it, especially when contrasting Peter’s privileged experience to Bea’s day-to-day life. (The fact that she lived in Great Britain, that the problems she mentioned happening there were connected to places and brands I do actually know, allowed me to connect more personally with her experience.)

However, two things turned to be a definite let-down for me. The first was insidious enough that I didn’t noticed it in the beginning, but it kept creeping back: regular allusions to other people in terms of skin colour and of characteristics that smacked of a certain… narrow-mindedness, to say the least. I don’t meab skin colour as simply descriptive, but as judgmental. For instance, a nurse from Guatemala is several times compared to an ape, and not in a shiny manner:

Nurse Flores spoke up again, her simian face unexpectedly illuminated with sharp intelligence.

(Other occurrences include her “monkey face” and “simian fingers”.)

I also found that gem, which I don’t even deem deserving any comment at this point:

She was heterosexual despite her butch appearance.

For a while, I wondered if this was part of a process regarding Peter’s character, as hints of his changing, but I’m not so sure, because it clearly didn’t fit with his acceptance of the Oasans, who were so much more different. Although at times he does come off as pretty judgmental—especially when women are concerned—and didn’t help to make me like him:

Her face betrayed no emotion, although her lips twitched once or twice. Maybe she wasn’t a strong reader, and was tempted to mouth the words?

Clearly no one would ever mouth a word while reading for any other reason than struggling with the text. And, once again, it’s about a woman.

Peter didn’t strike me as particularly likeable anyway

It didn’t matter, for the moment, that she misjudged him. She was overwhelmed, she was in distress, she needed help. Rightness or wrongness was not the point.

Yes, poor little misunderstood preacher, in his paradise light-years from Earth, with his mission of evangelising people who’ve been welcoming him with open arms, while his distressed wife struggles with worse problems and calls him on his bullshit—sorry, “misjudges” him. Not that Bea’s so much better, considering one thing she did in his back. And she has her prissy moments of I’m-so-much-better-than-you when she describes how her hospital “gets the dregs”, i.e. people who don’t have the means to get private health insurance.

So while I expected a story that’d show me the struggles of a couple trying to stay united despite the distance, and would focus as much on both parties, I got a bleak reminder about how human beings, even (especially?) the ones who preach love, can sometimes be the worst. Which, in itself, is actually brilliant writing. Just… not what I would’ve wanted to read, not now. And not with the constant lingering doubt: were those the characters‘ views, or the author‘s?

I was also not impressed with the ending: too open for such a story. Too many threads left loose. As if the author had become bored with his story, and decided to let it hang there.

Clearly there were beautiful moments in this novel, that can make you feel like you’re really “with the characters”, but the other problems kept distracting me so much that this read ended up being more tedious than pleasant.

Yzabel / October 30, 2014

Review: Broken Realms

Broken Realms by D.W. Moneypenny

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

Mara Lantern doesn’t believe in metaphysical powers and alternate realities. That’s about to change.

After a jetliner plunges into the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon, everyone survives. So why do crash investigators have a hangar full of bodies, one for each passenger except Mara? Before the plane goes down, she glimpses a new reality, one with scales and snouts, fangs and gills. She sees a boy running down the aisle carrying a ball of blue light, chased by a girl who could be her clone. By trying to help, she unwittingly unleashes dozens of creatures on an unsuspecting world and sparks a series of events that threatens her life, her family and everything she believes. To save them, she has to embrace a power she cannot comprehend.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I’ve debated again and again, whether I should give this book 1* or 2, so let’s say it’s a 1.5. I wouldn’t deem it as bad per se. In fact, it dealt with themes I’m usually fascinated with: parallel worlds, and manipulating the very fabric of reality. But it was just so long. It felt so long. It felt as if it picked up by the 75% mark, which was too late to muster much interest in me, and I’ll be honest: if I hadn’t got it through NetGalley, if I hadn’t considered myself as owing it a review (and a full read), I would havd stopped reading it days ago.

I loved the beginning: that scene in the plane, one set of people dying while another replaced them—raising from the start the question of “who is real?” Can we call people from Mara’s world “the real versions”, or are their “dopplegängers” just as real? It’s all in the eye of the beholder, and one soon comes to realise that things aren’t so easy. It’s not simply about sending people back to their original realms. It’s not only about the poor ones who died and were replaced by “evil” counterparts, because while some of those counterparts were indeed rotten, others were pretty decent people. And that’s the key word: people. In that regard, you can’t read this book with an all-or-nothing approach.

Unfortunately, the characters and the way they made their way through the story seemed off balance to me. There was a lot of talking, of explaining, something that was partly unavoidable (considering the theories behind the various worlds and how to affect them), but too often I caught myself thinking that the characters took their sweet time getting to actually tackling the problems. Again, I guess it was logical, in a way (for instance, convincing Mara of her powers in a snap of fingers would have been just… bad); only it happened in ways that made the story drag.

Maybe the premise of “every single passenger survived vs. every single passenger died”, something that really grabbed me in the blurb, would have deserved more spotlight (as it was, the ones who should have cared packed up the investigation pretty quickly—and I’m talking of several people here, not just a certain person). Maybe the plot would have called for more action on the main characters’ part (all the scenes at the repair shop didn’t strike me as particularly useful, and I suppose they contributed in dragging things down). At this point, it’s hard to tell, becaue everything’s got muddled in my head. I never found enough interest to read more than a few chapters at once, despite somewhat wanting to know where the plot was going.

There are intriguing things in this novel. Alas, I just couldn’t remain interested for very long, nor invested in the characters and their relationships.

Yzabel / October 19, 2014

Review: The Schwarzschild Radius

The Schwarzschild Radius by Gustavo Florentin

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

Rachel, an 18-year-old Columbia University student, descends into the netherworld of runaways and predators to find her sister, Olivia, who has suddenly disappeared.

After getting a job in a strip joint where Olivia worked, then doing private shows in the homes of rich clients, Rachel discovers that Olivia has been abducted by a killer who auctions the deaths of young girls in an eBay of agony.

When she finds Olivia, Rachel becomes the killer’s next target.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 stars, veering towards a 4.

Very graphic in parts, and not shying away from dealing with the darkest recesses of the human soul. This might turn off some people, so if depictions of child pornography rings, sex slaves and peep-show practices are something a reader doesn’t want to read about, then better not pick up this novel. Personally, I found it fascinating in a trainwreck way: you can’t help but watch, even though it’s disgusting, and it makes you think about all those people, about depravity, about how low a human being can fall.

Rachel struck me as a resourceful young woman with guts, and overall smart enough to discover a lot on her own quickly enough to avoid falling down as well—because things seemed to move fast, and I have no doubt that once caught in such a spiral, every day spent in it would’ve made it harder and harder for her to go back, as well as to keep the peep show sessions and private parties to a “manageable” level. She was determined to find her sister at all costs; also, she cared about Achara, which was very humane. The one qualm I have with her is that the mistake that made everything speed up was, frankly, a pretty basic one, and I’m still wondering if she shouldn’t have been able to avoid it, considering how savvy she was overall. But I’m not sure either (even though, when the first tell-tale sign occurred, I immediately thought “something’s wrong here”), and I wouldn’t consider that as “too stupid to live” syndrome in any case.

The main female characters in general did what they could with what they had. It may not have been much, but when they had an opportunity to do something (try to escape, help each other, try to hurt the culprit…), they seized it. That it worked or not didn’t matter: they still tried, even though their trials were a very dire ones and they could’ve given up a long time ago. Each of them turned out strong in her own way, fighting until the end.

The plot itself moved at a fast enough pace, with a lot of suspense. Some events that appeared as strange actually made a lot of sense a couple of chapters later, and I liked how the author managed to “trap” me here the same way he did the characters. It was an interesting process to go through.

On the downside, I found the narrative a bit disjointed at times, as if it was trying to get faster to the next part, with the seams somewhat forgotten along the way. The writing style felt the same in a few places. Nothing terribly annoying, but still enough that I noticed it. I also wished it dealt more with Olivia’s actions: what exactly happened to make her go from volunteering to the underworld? (Obviously she was in for the money for a reason I won’t spoil, obviously she didn’t choose to be picked by the Webmaster, and was no doubt abducted, but while we’re given clear reasons about Rachel’s behaviour leading her exactly in the same situation—she was investigating and looking for her sister, after all—Olivia’s were more muddled. As if there was another, hiden reason that was never revealed. It may be a false impression on my part, only considering all the trouble Rachel went through, I definitely would’ve wanted to learn more.)

Yzabel / October 15, 2014

Review: Upgraded

Upgraded by Neil Clarke

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

An anthology of original cyborg stories edited by a cyborg. Stronger. Better. Faster. We will rebuild you.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

As usual with anthologies, always a tricky read to rate. Some of the stories I really enjoyed, others I found average, others yet were too far from my own tastes to hit home. Nothing unexpected here. All in all, there was only one story I really skipped/skimmed over, and a few that I struggled with at first, but ended up reading all the same, thinking “in the end it was somewhat worth it.”

Perhaps the theme of “cybernetics” is making things a little hard in that regard: either it works or it doesn’t, you won’t really find many other different themes to check for if it ends up not being your cup of tea. But that’s kind of a given, considering the anthology’s title and blurb.

A lot of the stories also toy with concepts questioning whether cybernetic enhancement would be a good or a bad thing: hopes crumbling, cyberntics leading to madness or violence, and so on. Those definitely open a path for deeper reflection here.

Stories I really liked:

* Seventh Sight: Part of my enjoyment probably stemmed of a personal fascination with tetrachromats, colours, and whatever is related to how we perceive the latter.

* Always the Harvest: This short story opens the anthology, and provides an interesting view on what defines “humans”, and on how a non-human conscience may interpret the image we project of ourselves.

* Wizard, Cabalist, Ascendant: A bit hard to grasp at first, but definitely interesting if one’s looking for reflections about transhumanism.

* The Regular: A more “typical” story, on the model of detective shows, which probably makes it easier to grasp.

A word of warning: a few stories made use of a second person point of view, which unfortunately is a serious break-it for me (frankly, apart of Choose Your Own Adventure books, it never works—and even in such cases, it has always tended to grate on my nerves). It doesn’t mean they’re rubbish, just that I can’t stand that point of view. Too bad, because Musée de l’Âme Seule has really touching moments (granted, it’s not 100% second person POV; but it felt like it too much to make me forget the constant “you”…).

Yzabel / October 13, 2014

Review: Soulless

Soulless by Amber Garr

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

When it comes to death and love…only one is guaranteed.

Four decades ago Nora died. A tragic event for someone so young; however, four decades ago Nora was also given a second chance to walk among the living.

A Death Warden with a mysterious past, her job is to escort the newly expired towards the light, battling with the Soul Hunters who want the freshly dead to help with their own evil purposes buried in the dark.

When Nora’s charges suddenly become targets, she realizes that the hunters are after far more than just souls. A shift in power between good and evil threatens to change everything, risking the lives of the only family Nora has ever known.

Devastated and angry, she’s forced to face the man she once loved – a man who chose darkness over her – in order to find the answers she needs to stop the horror from escalating. Yet, while a lost relationship still haunts her broken heart, a new Warden with secrets of his own will enter the mix and quickly alter everything Nora believed to be true.

Death is unavoidable…but sometimes, so is love.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Interesting premise and world (Death Wardens vs. Soul Hunters), but characters that turned out too difficult to stand, at least for me.

The story reads fast, and getting into it was quite easy. We’re quickly introduced to what being a Warden entails, and to what Soul Hunters do. Granted, their names kind of make it obvious; still, it’s good to see such things explained through active scenes, and not just in passing. Even though this could have become an info-dump, it didn’t (or if it did, not in a way that felt like I was having tons of information dumped on me).

However, I had the constant, nagging feeling that something was off. I suspected that the “something” was the characters. Some two thirds in, it just didn’t work anymore at all.

Nora is almost sixty: she died at eighteen, then spent fourty years as a Warden. Despite her long experience, though, she behaves like a teenager in more than one way, from moping about her mysterious death (understandable if it’s just happened, less interesting if it was ages ago) to letting her “hormones” lead the ball (she’s dead, by the way, so why would she still have hormones anyway?). That’s a specific pet peeve of mine, but I think it’s a justified one: when using characters that are older than they look, they must also act older, otherwise we might as well be shown a regular 18-year-old heroine.

While it seems that she’s going to be a leading character, the one with experience, compared to the younger one she has to teach, she actually becomes rather passive. Sure, she trains to fight. Sure, she’s given a charge of her own. Then she turns into the girl who has to be protected. You’d think that fourty years later, she wouldn’t need that so much. I wanted to see her actually teaching things to Jason; I got Jason jumping in front of her to save her.

Jason: nice character at first sight, a soldier who actually enlisted because he wanted to become a medic and thought he’d learn useful things in that regard in the army. Yet also a cliché (cowboy, ranch, manly man of manliness).

Then came the testosterone and jealousy contests. Apart from a couple of Elders, the few other female characters are, of course, girls who intend on seducing Jason:

A pretty, young girl with bright red hair and matching lips jumped forward. Her eagerness irritated me even though it shouldn’t. She stepped into the circle, eyeing Jason like a piece of chocolate cake with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Biting her bottom lip seductively, I rolled my eyes.

Ensue staring, dark glares, fighting in as revealing clothing as possible to grab the guy’s attention, and bodies getting too close to each other during training. Slut shaming wasn’t 100% in the open, but it definitely kept swimming under the surface. (Also dangling participles here and there, as you can see from the quote.)

This is one of those instances in which the romance clearly ruined the game for me. I’m not fond of love triangles in general, but that’s because they’re usually cliché, and tend to take over the actual plot. While the stakes could have been alluring here, after a while, it was very difficult for me to go past the typical “bad guy in black vs. manly soldier ex-cowboy”—complete with jealous, passive-aggressive domineering attitude:

He paused, something else balancing on the tip of his tongue. “Did you say Sani and Theron saved you?”
I shivered with the memory, and Jason held me tighter. His heavy arm felt like an iron clamp, gluing me to his side forever.

Guys, there’s a bigger problem looming on the horizon, and actually the horizon is getting very, very close because the book’s ending soon. Can we focus?

Add a bit of ain’t-telling-you-nothing (as in, some characters definitely know a lot more, yet refuse to spit the information out until, obviously, it’s much too late for that). I just don’t like that, since it creates an artificial delay in readers getting said information, while we all know we won’t get it anyway due to the character-rendered-unable-to-speak trope. (I swear, I can feel that one coming from miles away.)

In short: a good idea for a story, with themes that usually grab my interest (death, reapers), yet characters that grated on my nerves too much for me to enjoy it, and probably also a plot dealt with too quickly (there would have been more room for it without the girls competing over the guy, for sure). 1.5 stars.

Yzabel / October 11, 2014

Review: The Red Magician

The Red Magician by Lisa Goldstein

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

The Red Magician is the tale of Kicsi, a young girl in a backwoods Eastern European village in the early 1940’s, a hamlet so isolated that the villagers know nothing of the brewing war – have no hint of the future save for ominous dreams. Into this village comes Voros, a redheaded wanderer, a juggler and magician, to disrupt their lives and antagonize the local rabbi…with whom he must fight a cabbalistic duel to which Kicsi is a secret witness. Then the Nazis arrive, and the world changes. Kicsi is first imprisoned, then must journey with Voros back to what remains of her village, for a climactic battle between the old world and the new. The Red Magician is a notable work of Holocaust literature, a distinguished work of fiction, and a marvelously entertaining fantasy – as Philip K. Dick remarked upon its first publication, “nourishment for the mind and the soul.”

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of OpenRoad Media through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

An interesting short story, though I must admit it wasn’t exactly what I expected, and I ended up not liking it as much as I hoped.

On the one hand, I could easily feel the magic permeating the atmosphere, the strange aura surrounding Vörös. Moreover, there’s a golem in the middle, and I’m often very, very partial towards golems (everybody has their favourite mythological/magical creature; well, this is mine).

I liked the theme of revenge and misdirected anger woven through the story. Though not original in itself, it hit home, and the book managed to show how sterile and blind revenge may be, yet also how born from genuine feelings: when your fear and grief for your loved ones are so strong, and when you can’t actually strike at the real culprits, what else can you do? Wouldn’t you turn to the next designated villain in your line of sight—even though he’s not a villain, even though he’s not responsible?

On the other hand, I found that the characters in general lacked substance. I didn’t really get to “feel” the presence of Kicsi’s family, for instance, nor of her potential fiancé, and so their fates seemed almost as secondary. I kept wondering why Vörös didn’t fill a more active role: he could probably have done a lot more (alright, at some point he was missing some of his tools… but there might have been a way to retrieve them), and instead kept going away. This didn’t really fit with his claims of having wanted to warn people, to the point where his worry and eagerness actually achieved the contrary.

The Holocaust part, too, felt rushed, and not exploited in a way that could have made the novel really striking. I sensed that more could’ve been done to it, because the author definitely seemed to have a knack to describe both the camps and the life before them in a peaceful community.

Conclusion: a likeable story, with powerful elements that may not have been exploited to their fullest potential.

Yzabel / October 10, 2014

Review: Jackaby

Jackaby by William Ritter

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

Miss Rook, I am not an occultist,” Jackaby said. “I have a gift that allows me to see truth where others see the illusion–and there are many illusions. All the world’s a stage, as they say, and I seem to have the only seat in the house with a view behind the curtain.”

Newly arrived in New Fiddleham, New England, 1892, and in need of a job, Abigail Rook meets R. F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with a keen eye for the extraordinary–including the ability to see supernatural beings. Abigail has a gift for noticing ordinary but important details, which makes her perfect for the position of Jackaby’s assistant. On her first day, Abigail finds herself in the midst of a thrilling case: A serial killer is on the loose. The police are convinced it’s an ordinary villain, but Jackaby is certain it’s a nonhuman creature, whose existence the police–with the exception of a handsome young detective named Charlie Cane–deny.

Review:

(I received a copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I must say something, first, about those “X meets Y” comparisons: publishers, don’t do that. Please. Just don’t. Because while it makes you feel that it’s attracting more readers, the truth is that at least half the time, your people get it wrong, and it doesn’t do good to the book in the long run. Please let books rest on their own merits. Because this one has merits nonetheless, in spite of the misguided attempt to market it as something it isn’t really.

I found myself enjoying this novel for its humour:

“There’s a jar in my office marked ‘Bail.’ If you don’t hear from me by tonight, just bring it down to the Mason street Station, would you? I’m usually in the first or second cell.”

And how it wove supernatural elements (notably fairies) into its narrative. Although some of those occurrences were somewhat predictable, it was the kind of predictable that I wanted to see, that I expected, and that made me smile, not roll my eyes.

Abigail was an enjoyable narrator, somewhat passive at times, but more in a way that involved her getting used to her new situation—and then getting her voice and own wishes heard, rather than accept to remain in the background like a prim and proper lady. While she was a klutz at times, she also acknowledged it with humour, and struck me as a character with room to grow into a strong protagonist. She started off traveling after committing what one might deem a silly youthful mistake, but it’s a mistake I couldn’t really blame her for, because she made it wishing to take her life into her own hands, not remaining hidden behind petticoats.

Jackaby is a very quirky character, one that has a lot of strengths, especially when it comes to perceiving the unseen, the hidden world behind our world, and to act upon such knowledge… with a bit of wit he’s not aware of:

“I assure you, I am a consummate professional. I do not cast spells!”

Yet he isn’t perfect, and can definitely do with an assistant who’ll pay attention to more mundane things. I thought he and Abigail completed each other quite nicely in that regard—and, just as important to me, they weren’t thrown into some immediate romance subplot (I hope they’ll never be). Granted, there is a bit of a romantic interest in the novel, only directed towards another character, and without obfuscating the plot. In such a novel, it would just have damaged everything; I really appreciate that the romance trope wasn’t given more sway in here.

The mystery wasn’t too difficult to solve—I started suspecting who the culprit was early enough—but the dialogue lines, Abigail’s narrative and the secondary characters were interesting and pleasant to read about.