Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Master of the Revels

By Nicole Galland.

Previous book here.

I was quite steamed that the previous book ended on a cliffhanger and there didn't appear to be any sequel in the works. Well, several years later, there is one! Though I confess that I'm kind of confused as to what happened with the authors, as the previous book was written by two and now it's just by one. I'm delighted that Nicole Galland carried on because I wanted a sequel, but I confess I'm a bit confused as to (a) why the book is marketed as "Neal Stephenson's D.O.D.O." when it was both of them originally, and (b) is Neal completely out of the DODO biz now, or what is going on with that? I have scoured the Internet and not found much, other than that Neal and Nicole appear to be on good terms, he was helping her promote the book, and they just seem to loosey-goosey will write books...whenever, I guess? (That's my vague interpretation from this video, anyway.) 

I think I'm going to have to take the rest of this review below the spoiler cut. Four stars, though. 

Payback's A Witch

By Lana Harper.

Emmy Harlow is the scion of the fourth-ranked magical family in Thistle Grove. While she loves the place, she dated the scion of the most prominent family, Gareth Blackmoore, in high school and he ditched her for not being a big enough deal. After that, it was a combination of the breakup and realizing that she'll always be fourth tier that motivates her to leave town for the big city of Chicago--even if it kills off her magic. 

However, the Harlow family are the traditional arbiters of the magical competition for the three most prominent families to determine who runs the town, and Emmy has to go home and do that. Her magic comes back again, and she finds out that Gareth has also loved and left her best friend Linden and also Talia Abramov, a mostly-lesbian(?) aloof hottie. The Abramovs and Thorns are pretty well sick of the Blackmoores always winning--as is Emmy, for that matter--and the other two scions decide to try to band together so that one of them wins. While Emmy has to remain impartial in execution, in her heart she is down with this plan. 

Emmy and Talia (they're both bi) get into a hot n' sexy relationship pretty quickly, but that's going to be a problem if Emmy wants to go back to Chicago and Talia's not moving out of Thistle Grove. 

Overall, I enjoyed the fun, snarky narration of this and the worldbuilding is interesting. It's not as much of a "revenge" book as you would have assumed, but I did like how it was more of a "Let's take down the Blackmoore power structure" in general. There's also a revelation about why the Harlows are forever fourth class that's interesting. Emmy and Talia are nice together (I enjoy that Talia is kind of "dark witch" but also a good person, she's got edge) and I'm down with it, but it felt a bit insta-love, insta-easy right off the bat, with the only conflict being if one of them moves/doesn't move, and that doesn't feel like a big deal.

Overall I give it three and a half stars because I feel like it could have used a little bit more depth for it to be a more memorable book for me. I mean, it's still pretty good, but in the end I think I'm going to regard it on the "fun fluff" side and it may not be that memorable for me in the future. 

The Galaxy and the Ground Within

By Becky Chambers.

I read the first book in this series (The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet) ages ago, couldn't really get into books 2 and 3 for whatever reason, so here I am reading book 4. I don't remember all that much about the first book and somehow can't get my review to turn up in a search on this website (grrr), so I can't really refresh myself as to who's who, if anyone's a recurring character (I presume there are some), etc. My apologies.

Anyway, this book takes place at a space rest stop, more or less, and features a group of people from different species who are all stranded there for I think about a week when a freak technological failure traps everyone from leaving for awhile. Nobody's hurt, everybody's fine, but they can't fly out of there right away as planned.

In most sci-fi books, this would turn into a big world saving sort of thing where the motley crew of strangers have to band together to get things working, get the communications relays up again, keep debris from landing on people's heads and killing them, etc. Nope, not this book. While one character does go around asking people what their special skills are, just in case (I totally agree with this logic, and good job!), that doesn't really happen. People hang out, eat snacks, drink, dance, check out the local museum, and otherwise make temporary friends. Some dramas do come up a bit in the latter half of the book--one character accidentally breathes methane and goes into a coma, and another one finds out "Surprise, I'm suddenly fertile and I have my one chance in life to get laid and make an egg!" while in this situation, and two characters briefly argue about war--but that's about it.

It's a pleasant, fun, relaxing, sweet read, I have to say.

Our characters are:

• Ooloo, your hostess and owner of the Five-Hop One-Stop, who really enjoys hostessing and providing for others.
• Tupo, her teenage kid in the throes of puberty, who really likes rocks and started a museum of them.
• Speaker, a small alien who has to go around in a large exosuit so she can walk around and not breathe the air. She went down to the planet, leaving her sister Tracker on the ship, and she's worried about her.
• Roveg is an exile from his species for political reasons--he couldn't stomach it any more, but had to give up his kids when he was exiled. He's trying to get home for a visit and really can't miss that appointment.
• Pei, a warrior chick who's secretly in love with/fuckbuddying a human (Ashby from book 1) and feels conflicted about having to hide that from the rest of her species. She's the one that goes into Sudden Fertility Mode during this book and both feels the obligation to give up seeing Ashby to get laid with someone of her own species (uh....wherever she can find someone)? and at the same time, isn't super enthused about reproducing even if everyone else says it's great.

I particularly felt for Pei, who says around mid-book that she's not ready to blow her life up for being openly with Ashby, "He was what made problems bearable, what softened her angles and quieted her thoughts." That made me swoon and I'm rooting for them, however that might work. 

I also enjoyed Ouloo's getting into the middle of the war argument, saying all the things that have happened to everyone are wrong, but how do we fix it? She has no idea and says she'd go along with anyone who says they can fix something. "I just want everyone to get along, and to be well taken care of. That's it. I want everybody to be happy, and I do not care how we get there." Awww.

I liked how the characters just having conversations with each other helped them to work out their issues, like saying "It's okay to just not want to do that," etc. And some of them left gifts for each other after they've left, which is also very sweet. This was a fairly low plot book that managed to keep me interested, and that's saying something. Good job. Four stars. 

My Plain Jane

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows.

This book is a retelling of Jane Eyre, except (a) with the Bronte family in it instead of Jane's long-lost cousins, and (b) ghosts! Namely, Jane (or anyone else who's temporarily died and come back) can see ghosts, which makes them suitable for employment by the Royal Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits. Jane is actually even more than just a seer now--she's a Beacon, who attracts ghosts and theoretically can tell them what to do. And despite Jane's plainness, ghosts find her absolutely beautiful. (Though I did wonder about what ghosts Jane knew in life thought about this?)) Anyway, Helen Burns has stuck around as Jane's ghostly best friend. Her current living best friend is Charlotte Bronte, who's already working on her future writing career, based on Jane's life. 

Upon meting a Society member--one Alexander Blackwood--and seeing that they trap ghosts in objects to stop them from harassing people--Jane doesn't agree with their methods (and is concerned about Helen's safety) and refuses, A LOT, to join their ranks. She'd much rather be a governess, thankyouverymuch, and so she hies herself off to her new job at Thornfield, where the owner is weird but hot and things are weird. Though Helen is around to point out that Rochester's behavior is straight up weird, Jane's had next to no contact with men all her life, women are raised in their society that men are everything, and you get the drift.

Alexander's boss is putting the pressure on him to hire another Beacon, as they haven't had one for quite awhile. His current enthusiastic but inept assistant is Branwell Bronte, and Charlotte is totally desperate to both get out of Lowood and get another job and she'd LOVE to work for the Society. So everyone sneaks into the Thornfield house party, and, well, the plot is a lot better with ghosts, especially ones that can possess you. I really liked what the authors did with this plot. Much like their other stories I've read lately, adding in one new fantastical element really improves everything, and makes Rochester's behavior MAKE A LOT MORE SENSE. The entire plot now makes A LOT MORE SENSE, and that's glorious. 

This is definitely less romantic than any other books in the series, as the vague budding relationship between Alexander and Charlotte really doesn't get much play here and I didn't really care about it. Ah well. As for Jane...well, the ending has a surprise there, hah hah.

Overall, four stars. Good job, y'all!

Quotes:

• "Charlotte had always known Jane to be a kind, thoughtful sort of person. Even when she was committing murder, she was thinking of others." 
• "As a general rule, Alexander found everything suspicious. Like, why didn't women's clothes have pockets?" 
• I'm amused at the ah....ghostly cameo from book 1, hah hah.

 

My Contrary Mary

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows.

If you watched the TV show Reign, THIS ONE'S FOR YOU.

Here's the sequel to My Lady Jane, with cameos from the original cast but focusing on Mary, Queen of Scots, who cameo'd in the last book. This one's not quite as fun as everything else I've read in the series, but mostly because this is pretty serious shit here. Mary's evil uncles are trying to by proxy take over several countries in Europe at once, and Queen Catherine de Medici is up to her own aims. As the death count (or presumed death count) rises, poor Mary and Francis are trying to figure out how to thwart everyone, while very slowly transitioning into more of a romantic relationship.

France is a Verity country, and Mary and her people are secretly animal people, which of course comes in handy when trying to thwart these things. Mary and Francis are the main characters, along with the made-up Aristotle de Nostradame, teenage daughter of Nostradamus. Ari's more of a master potion maker than a fortune teller (the gag in this book is that all of her visions are of modern-day movies and make no sense to anyone), and her dad may or may not be losing his marbles--but in this world, if he says a frog is ruling France, well, that may be literal :P Ari is employed by Queen Catherine as another spy/lady-in-waiting to Mary, but since Ari is both a nice girl and secretly in love with one of Mary's ladies, she's sympathetic to their aims. 

Mary's life was incredibly depressing, if you read history/watched Reign, especially the last few years with her super shitty evil last two husbands. Happily, this book rectifies that situation. The authors themselves say, "We wish history had been kinder to Mary, Queen of Scots, but it just...wasn't. These things happened, and they sucked." But ah...it won't be as bad as it could have been here. I did crack up at the snark about how history could have gone at the end. 

Quotes:

• "I see a girl with pale hair singing in the snow. She wants to let go, but I don't know what it is." -typical vision for Ari
• "During this time in history, approximately 92 percent of women were named one of four names: Mary, Anne, Catherine, or Jane, which led to many cases of mistaken identity." (I note that the authors came up with nicknames for the Four Marys who were ladies in waiting.)
• "Sometimes the woman cuts off the biscuit supply for no reason." -King Henry, not being let in on the reason. 
• After Ari gives King Henry a blinding potion so he can't insist on watching Mary and Francis consummate their marriage: "And yet, I can't bloody seeeee!" the king cried out in agony. "I told you to stop doing that so much," said Catherine. The entire room went quiet."

Anyway, this is still a fun book even as it deals with serious/depressing subject matter, and has a happy ending. Four stars!

 

My Lady Jane

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows.

As previously mentioned, I read another book by these authors and loved it, so I devoured this one in like 24 hours. It's...sort of...a series? Or at least it's historical Janes being rewritten, anyway.

This tells a much happier version of the Lady Jane Grey (she of the "queen for nine days and then beheaded" life story) story, featuring her, her bestie/cousin King Edward, and her future husband, Gifford Dudley. Oh yeah, and people in this world can spontaneously develop the ability to turn into animals,* which they may or may not be able to control, but it runs in families and appears to run rampant in nobility/this world. Of course, there' s also people who are totally against them (Verities). However, ever since King Henry VIII suddenly turned into a lion and ate his jester, England's been more friendly towards these people existing. But will that last?

* I feel like a jerkass saying this, but I can't spell or pronounce the word for these types of people. I don't know where the authors got that word (I can understand where garou came from, but this one? Confused), but that word just kind of broke my brain every time they said it. It's a similar effect to whenever I'm trying to read up on that Eurovision Icelandic band. Love y'all, can't say or spell it correctly and am an idiot.) 

Poor young Edward IRL died young of illness, and at the beginning of the book is told he's dying and he's told by his advisor, John Dudley, that he needs to appoint an animal-friendly heir, and his oldest sister Mary is a straight up hater. Dudley manages to talk Edward into making Jane (or at least her sons) his heir, and to have her married off to his younger son Gifford. Gifford spends his days (uncontrollably) as a horse and his nights as a man, and nobody can be arsed to get up the nerve to tell Jane about this until she finds out the morning after the wedding. Guess how :P Though Gifford is hot and sweet and a closet poetry writer/public performer of said poetry. Jane's an extreme book nerd and despite some protest and writing her cousin a letter about the whole thing, takes it relatively well. 

Then Edward's dog alerts him to the fact that he's being poisoned, and he figures out it's all a plot to get him off the throne, and he needs to make a break for it...leaving Jane to her brief royal stint, being thrown into the Tower, and....well, there's good plot reasons why people can suddenly turn into useful animals under stress. (I note that the story of how Edward's grandmother became a skunk is hilarious.) So things shall end better for our sweet, smart Jane, her sweet, loyal horse/husband, and the well-meaning Edward, who finally meets a girl and at one point has to meet his ex-fiancee, Mary, Queen of Scots. (More on her later.) 

Anyway, this was great fun and super sweet and the romantic couplings were adorable and you really root for them. I definitely enjoy the whole animal-aspects thing, how it works in the plot, thematically, personality-wise, all of it. I enjoy that this goes a lot better than real life. Four stars! I had a great time reading it. 

Quotes:

• "Which brings us to on fateful afternoon in the royal court of England, when King Henry VIII, during a fit of rage, transformed into a great lion and devoured the court jester, much to the audience's delight. They clapped enthusiastically, for no one really liked the jester. (Later, the courtiers discovered the incident was not a rehearsed act of artful deception, but indeed an actual lion masticating the jester. When the audience found out the truth they no longer clapped, but they did remark, "That clown had it coming.")
• "The head of the Verity Church was not pleased with King Henry's decision, but every time Rome sent a missive denouncing the decree, the Lion King ate the messenger. Hence the phrase, Don't eat the messenger."
• "It was only an engagement, after all. She'd been engaged before. Four times, as a matter of fact." ... "Well, I'm sure he'll be just as wonderful as the other fiances were."
• "Dearest Jane, Sorry I made you marry a horse. Your father-in-law is trying to kill me. Send help." 
• "There were also a handful of invitations to preside over state events, visit various nobles' country homes, and attend something called the Red Wedding. Jane checked the "will not attend" box without giving this last invitation a second thought. As if she wanted to go to any more weddings."
• "Once, she made Father so angry that he turned into a lion, and we were afraid he'd devour her, but then she turned into a skunk and sprayed him right in the face.. It took weeks for him to be rid of the smell." 

My Calamity Jane

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows.

I have vaguely seen this sort-of-book-series around and found the most recent two of them at the library. As far as I can tell, these three authors team up to write books from three different points of view, taking historical figures with common first names and writing alternate, more cheerful histories of them, while throwing in say, paranormal stuff and authorial fourth-wall-breaking snark.

I am DEFINTELY DOWN FOR THAT.

Anyway: this one retells the story of Calamity Jane, Frank Butler, and Annie Oakley....with garou (werewolves). Wild Bill Hickok was a famous garou hunter and now is doing a traveling Wild West show that's secretly doing undercover garou investigation. They're trying to track the "Alpha" who seems to be biting people without their consent and brainwashing them.

• Jane grew up with a garou mother--this didn't go well--and early in the book, gets bitten and becomes a garou herself. After being informed that there's supposedly a cure in Deadwood for this, she travels there and is....well, quite surprised at what's going on there. (I will note that the authors take some fun and creative historical liberties with the Deadwood story.)
• Annie Oakley's a sharpshooter who really wants to join the Wild West show and also falls for Frank (and his dog George, who she's not allergic to) at first sight, and she figures out they're secret garou hunters early on. She's excited to join that, since she had a horrendous experience with some bad garou in her childhood and is totally down for killing them.
• Frank Butler got bitten and turned garou as a small child and was rescued/adopted by Wild Bill. He's  kept the secret, learned to tame his inner wolf, and helps the recently bitten to manage to have a good life without getting violent. (Their gang only goes after badly behaving garou.) He falls in love with Annie at first sight, but when she starts spouting off that she hates garou, well, that hurts his feelings. 

Overall, I loved this, it's really fun. Once everyone gets to Deadwood, the plot details you know about Wild Bill and Al Swearengen get thrown for delightful loops that I really enjoyed. I also really enjoyed the overall authorial fourth-wall-breaking snark, and throwing in historical exposition, and using famous lines from modern times just for the heck of it. I loved the other characters, such as Edwina/Edward, a reporter that Calamity Jane goes for and vice versa, but her writing career gets in the way. I also really liked the Lakota sisters, Many Horses and Walks Looking, that Annie befriends later on, those were great girls. (I note that the authors consulted with a sensitivity reader on this topic.) And Wild Bill himself is very endearing as the proud papa to this bunch. 

Here's some quotes so you get the feel of what reading this is like:

• On Jane's various claims: "Again, reader, this was not exactly the truth. Or even a little bit the truth."
• "The truth is, up to this point in her life Jane had never been in a skirmish with the Sioux. She had never actually met a Native American in person, let alone in any kind of combat. In her past adventures, as a scout or driver, if Jane ever had reason to believe that an Indian was thereabouts, she'd turn right around and go quick as she could in the opposite direction."
• "And thus, dear readers, the very first game of H-O-R-S-E was played, Of course, now the game uses trick basketball shots instead of trick gun shots, and this change is probably a good thing, because no one was as good at shooting as Frank and Annie, and therefore if other people tried to replicate the game, there would be blood. Anyway, back to this delightful scene of a boy and girl, flirting with the rules of propriety and shooting guns at each other." 
• Annie: "Hey, big guy. Sun's getting' real low." "Still hours 'til sunset," muttered someone outside. "how long's this girl been drinking?"
• "Ahem, narrators here. We know, we're supposed to be writing a comedy, and this whole part is pretty sad, but sometimes bad things happen and people are sad. That's the truth of life. Still, even the saddest of times can have moments of humor to help pull you through to the other side of grief. We'll get you there. We promise." 

I'm going to put one more quote behind the spoiler space, for my own amusement.

Anyway, this is four stars, highly recommended, great fun! I'll get the rest of them when I can.

A Deadly Education

By Naomi Novik.

This is a book I've been vaguely debating reading for a year. On the one hand, I like Naomi Novik books. On the other hand, the concept behind this one is depressing as fuck. I saw it in the library, I flicked open the first page, and the narrative voice was so compelling that I grabbed it.

The concept behind this book is that magically gifted people--apparently just young kids to especially teenagers though--are just walking bait for every single hungry magical monster roaming the world, of which there are MANY. Kids/teenagers are just literally constantly being eaten. And to quote the book, "the best solution that all the most powerful and brilliant wizards of the last century and more have been able to come up with," is to have all teenagers go to a magically automated high school of death, with no adults, no teachers, just magically automated learning for 4 years, while monsters are constantly attacking them. You seriously need a bodyguard just to take a shower. You can't have any contact with the outside world, more people die than survive, and "graduation" is trying to fight your way out of the school while all the monsters attack, and nobody's been able to fix the "scouring machinery" in the graduation hall for the entire existence of the school. And this is literally the best solution they have to keep as many teens alive as possible. Why is anyone having kids if this crap is going on? 

So yeah, DEPRESSING AS FUCK CONCEPT OF HORRIBLE DEATH SCHOOL. To quote our narrator,

"For the last three years, I've had to think and plan and strategize how I'm going to survive every single meal in here, and I'm so tired of it, and I'm tired of all of them, hating me for no reason, nothing I've ever done. I've been tying myself in knots and working myself to exhaustion just to avoid hurting any of them." 

Meet Galadriel "El" Higgins: her Welsh mother Gwen and her Indian father Arjun fell in love and got pregnant in the Scholomance, and he got eaten by a maw-mouth at graduation getting her out. Gwen is the biggest giant good happy hippie you ever heard of in your life...and in compensation, her daughter is prophesied to be a horrible murdering dark wizard and her father's family would have nothing to do with her after that. El loves her mother, but learned at age 9 that literally nobody in their hippie commune would lift a finger to save her life when she was being attacked. "People don't like me enough to help me even if I scream." And virtually nobody likes her, as she gives off bad vibes. And to be fair, El is justifiably Very Cranky about how her life is going. Her affinity is for being gifted with say, mass murder curses every time she just wants a spell to mop the floor. She's "strict mana" (not fueling herself with any life force) and actively trying to NOT GO EVIL. Trying very hard. The poor girl needs to be liked on some level because one can't survive alone, but it's extremely hard going. 

At the beginning of the book, El is angry/snarky about the school hero, Orion Lake, saving her bacon. Orion basically is the Class Hero from Buffy, having saved hundreds of lives (to be fair, his power affinity helps with that sort of thing). He's from an enclave--enclaves being the safest way to live as a wizard, if you can get a group to take you--and he's famous and popular and whatnot. This is the sort of thing that makes El want to barf, even though she has secret plans to try to earn her way into an enclave circa senior year if she can just figure out the ah, likeability issue.  However, as she gets to know the guy as a real person, she develops sympathy and friendship for him, given his issues.  "He was living the same garbage story I was, only in mirror image." While this book really doesn't get very romantic, given the circumstances, you enjoy how El is all "I treat him like a normal person, why don't the rest of you try it?" to his enclave-mates. El also makes a few friends of her own during the book, which is great.

At the end (I note that El and company are in their junior year, so there's one more year/book to go in this duology), the seniors point out that Orion has saved too many lives over the course of his career--not only does the school not provide enough food for that many people to eat, it means the mals only get hungrier and therefore more seniors are likely to die, and they're resentful of this. This leads to a scheme of Orion, El, and various seniors trying to fix the scouring equipment in the graduation hall so less people die. 

(I'm not entirely sure I understand all the technical details of the magic, scouring equipment, etc.to be honest.)

Anyway, this is disturbing and depressing but interesting? I like El. She's cranky AF and unpleasant but you root for her anyway, given what she's dealing with. Orion is an interesting situation as well. I liked El's eventual friends/allies that she makes, and even Chloe, a New York enclaver who starts out not liking El but finding hidden depths in her later, has potential.

And then there's the fact that El figures out how to take out a mal-mouth (the kind of creature that ate her dad) all by herself, and then continues to be utterly shaken and horrified that she managed it and realizes that's not something she can let get around. Maybe her powers for mass destruction could be used that way...? 

We'll see in book 2, I guess. Four stars.  

When Sorrows Come

By Seanan McGuire.

Previous book here. Review goes behind the spoiler cut. Four stars.

The Queen Will Betray You

By Sarah Henning.

Previous book here. 

Well, this is a dizzying book! Our big romance of Ama and Luca are kept apart for almost all of the book (sigh), as he and his team go to confront the Warlord and Ama ends up dealing with her betraying family/supposed allies in her own kingdom locking her up. The one ally she has...of sorts....is Prince Tallifer, who continues to be interesting/confusing/ambiguously evil and what do I make of him? Heck if I know.

There's a ton of female scheming in this one. We're told that one male ruler's been scheming to plant people throughout the other kingdoms who will commit murders and then take over, but then his supposed people turn on him to. Dowager Queen Ines in particular has a spectacular wedding that will definitely remind you of another famous one, let's put it that way. There's also a lot of Warlord issues, as we find out that it's kinda ah. Dread Pirate Roberts-y when it comes to that job. I admit that I enjoy seeing what this author's doing with the various tropes (especially the one that reminded me of The Three Amigos/Spartacus and other similar moments). More like "all queens will betray you" in this one, so watch out! 

We do find out more about the deceased King Sendoa's choices in the past and why he did what he did--how he always has a plan, but when other people go awry about it....

Anyway, it was an interesting read and I enjoyed all the double-crossing and whatnot. I don't know how emotionally engaged I am with any of it, though? (Which is to say, our lovebirds are still separate and hell, they spend more time with others.) I guess I'm giving it 3.5 stars overall.