Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Spellswept: A Prequel to the Harwood Spellbook

By Stephanie Burgis.

This is the prequel to Snowspelled, which I am guessing takes place...maybe ten years before Snowspelled? At any rate, Cassandra is thirteen years old in this one. But this book features Amy Standish, her future sister-in-law, who at the time is being mentored by Miranda Harwood, who is A Big Deal Around Here politically and is one of the rulers of Angland. Since joining the family, Amy has become beloved to all--she fits perfectly with her mentor, she's hit it off with Cassandra, and she's quietly fallen in love with Jonathan. But if you want to be a big deal politician in this world, you have to do like Boudicca did and marry a male magician. And Jonathan has made it perfectly clear that he has no interest in becoming one--I'm not sure if he even has any magical ability even if he wanted to. 

So Amy is planning on doing the political thing and proposing marriage to Lord Llewellyn, preferably tonight at this big deal gathering. But she keeps putting it off. And meanwhile, a disaster's about to erupt at the site they are at because the deceased Mr. Harwood set it up a long time ago and proper maintenance after his death doesn't sound like it was happening. But young Cassandra's got magic and she's about the only one who can figure it out. And Amy is just a delight at supporting/enabling this family, which is why everyone loves her. She makes darned sure Cassandra gets respect and gets to do what she wants to do, even if it devastates her mother.

And, of course, well, she's not gonna marry that lord guy. Nope.

I very much enjoyed this one, as Amy is lovely and fits so well with these people. I also like how she was all "Hey, a girl just did magic, I don't think my career is forever damned if I don't marry a magician, exceptions can happen" at the end. (Though in the original book, well....) 

I did have one very odd moment of red-flagging though. As a woman, I do enjoy the total gender behavior flip-flops of reading these books, even if in retrospect it makes no sense for a man to be compromised (since as I recall, the logic of "compromised" seems to be along the lines of "was it possible for her to maybe get pregnant if she was left alone with a dude?"), and that just isn't relevant if it's a dude. But at one point Amy says to a dude who is objecting to Cassandra doing magic, "I understand that gentlemen are the more emotional sex, but I have utter faith that you will all rise above the frailties of your natures to show the world exactly how impressive your magecraft is tonight," followed by a crack about "If we could possibly save the gentlemanly swoons for afterwards?" 

Now, on the one hand, she's trying to get people to stop having cows and suck it up and go fix the building before it falls in on their heads (literally) and I get that making cracks of that nature is probably along the lines of calling Marty McFly "chicken" in order to get him to race cars. It's razzing as a motivator. And lord knows I enjoy the cosmic revenge of this kind of thing flipping onto dudes. But at the same time I thought, how shitty is that to be something that someone says to you, that you're too emotional and frail and might swoon? So...argh. I dunno.

But overall, I also enjoyed this one and look forward to more books in this series. I'm rereading Snowspelled again after this. Four stars. 

In An Absent Dream

By Seanan McGuire.

"Katherine Lundy walked in the world. That was quite enough to set everything else into motion."

This is part of the Wayward Children series but is a prequel to well, everything else so far. Every Heart A Doorway is the only book that features this character in later life.

This one tells the story of (Katherine) Lundy and her portal world experience. Apparently it runs in the family that Lundy children can find doors to the Goblin Market, as her dad once used to go there--it's a world where you can enter and return around every 2 years-ish? until you turn 18 and have to choose to take Market citizenship or never return there again. 

Young Katherine was a very mature child for about age six in 1964 when she first found the door and went through. In her world, her father was the principal of her school and thus she had no friends. In the Market, she made her first friend, a girl named Moon, and generally enjoyed herself. But she'd periodically decide to go back home, realize most of the time that her world sucked and has irritating gender rules they want to make her follow, and then leave again. Meanwhile back in the Market, her friend Moon seems to have a hard time following the rules, and Lundy (who's told not to go by her first name there, so either use a nickname or your family name, like her father before her) starts doing her best to help Moon out.

The Market is based on an overall sense of fairness, bartering, and giving "fair value." Almost everything is some kind of exchange or balance and the overall sentient force of the Market balances it all out. If say, Lundy falls asleep one night before doing her hour's worth of book organization that she does to pay rent for a place to sleep, she'll grow feathers out the back of her neck until she's done her duty. The more behind you fall in your debts, the more likely you are to go full on bird and have an even harder time giving fair value to dig yourself out of your cosmic debt hole. I can't say I think this world sounds appealing to me--though those that go there say you can be happy there--but mostly because it seems like you could screw yourself over very easily. But Lundy, well, thinks she can handle it. And mostly she does, until she feels like she owes her family one last visit home before she leaves forever before turning 18, and her little sister Diana will not let her go--er, emotionally. This leads to the depressing/shitty climax in which Lundy thinks she can make some kind of deal to postpone* her birthday, and it doesn't go well. 

• If you've read the first book in the series, I'm not spoiling anything to mention this.

"It can be easy, when hearing about someone else's adventures in a far-off, magical land, to say "I would never choose the mundane world over thee fantastical. I would run into rivers of rainbow as fast as my legs would carry me, and I would never once look back." It is so often easy, when one has the luxury of being sure a thing will never happen, to be equally sure of one's answers. Reality, it must sadly be said, has a way of complicating things, even things we might believe could never be that complicated." 

Overall I liked this, particularly the style in which it was written, very "rueful fairy tale" and foreshadowing. I wouldn't want to live in Goblin Market either but it's an interesting system they've got going for themselves there. Very Logical. But there's two things that bothered me about it:

(a) I felt like we didn't get to hear much about the adventures Lundy had that affected her and made her choose to return to the regular world periodically. Whatever went on with Mockery in particular felt like something we needed to hear and could not because this series is designed to be short. That was frustrating. 

(b) The ending was just a giant "grrr, argh, wtf?" moment. I knew it was coming and I still didn't feel like it quite worked. I was frustrated, but maybe that's the point. 

Anyway...three and a half stars. I don't feel like I'm quite writing this so well, so go read this instead. Or this one. Or this one.

A Blink Of The Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction

By Terry Pratchett.

"Short stories, as I have said, cost me blood. I envy those people who can write one with ease, or at least what looks like ease. I doubt if I've done more than fifteen in my life." -Terry Pratchett

This is a collection of Terry Pratchett's short stories. He has little introductions before each one about how he came to write it. The more you read, the more you realize (and he admits) that short stories are not quite his jam. Indeed, I had some issues myself. 

I am biased on this topic: I only occasionally love a short story, but in general I want more than just a short story--it's like eating one potato chip. I usually don't buy books of short stories too much because they usually come out a mixed bag unless they are short stories taking place in an established universe that fill out the world. Sometimes one is interesting but most just make me glaze over.

And in this case, there were a few stories that really stood out as being good to me, but I could not tell you shit about what the other ones were even about, other than they used a lot of funny names. They flew through my head without any remaining memorability. I feel bad for saying this but Pratchett's dead and he's not gonna know and this is more to say "check this out at the library rather than buying it" anyway. 

The ones I really liked were:

• "Incubust," which is a funny drabble about genitalita.
• "Turntables of the Night" which may not be an official Discworld Death, but it features a Death, being funny.
• "The Secret Book of the Dead," a long poem that starts out with "They don't teach you the facts of death, / Your Mum and Dad. They give you pets." That sums it up.
• "Once and Future," about a stranded time traveler just waiting around for a Merlin or an Arthur to show up. But he's got a very good Nimue....
• "FTB," about a computer programmed to believe anything, meeting Santa Claus.
• "The Sea and Little Fishes," a beautiful story from the POV of Nanny Ogg as the annual witch trials come up. Granny Weatherwax always wins and everyone knows it. But when Letice Earwig tries "as a friend" to get Granny to quit competing, and it's suggested that Granny try being nice for a change....HEADOLOGY, WOO! It's great. 

Everything else, I did not care about. There are 32 stories (more or less) and I was only into six of them. Therefore, this book overall gets about 2.5 stars. 

Elantris

By Brandon Sanderson.

Once upon a time people from the country of Arelon would periodically magically undergo a transformation into a magical elf-ish person known as an Elantrian. Once that happened, they'd go live in the magical city of Elantris, which was awesome and perfect and all that jazz. Until ten years ago, when something went totally wrong and Elantris became totally trashed and covered in slime, and all the Elantrians lost their silver perfection and basically became old rotting zombies who can't heal and can't die short of beheading or other super destruction. And they tend to lose their sanity within about a year.  People still turn into Elantrians periodically, but now they're treated as dead and thrown into the locked city to rot. 

This book features three people and switches back and forth between their POV's in this rotating order:

(a) Crown Prince Raoden wakes up to find he's turned into an Elantrian in his sleep. Before his transformation, Raoden was quietly working with friends on a way to save the kingdom from his father the king, who is a good merchant but sucks at kinging and is making everything about money. Raoden is a perpetual optimist, but not in an annoying way. He immediately makes friends with the first sane guy he meets, Gallodon, who is a perpetual pessimist. Raoden optimistically makes friends, he saves people from being mugged by the various Elantrian gangs, he unites the gangs, and he gives people purposeful work to do, like cleaning up the joint. Raoden also gets to work on researching what went wrong to trash Elantris and works on trying to figure out what magical disaster befell them. Raoden is awesome and does the best job of cleaning up a crap town since I read I Dare. 

(b) Princess Sarene of Teod is gorgeous, super tall, and extremely smart and awesome. Unfortunately her awesomeness wasn't appreciated by anyone in Teod beyond her family, leaving her an old maid at age 25. Sarene is an awesome political animal and diplomat and manages to propose long distance marriage to Prince Raoden through letters and their Seons (kind of a combination magical sentient creature/floating ball/telelphone), and it actually sounds like it'd be a great match for both of them. Unfortunately, by the time Sarene arrives in Arelon, Raoden's death has been announced (nobody actually tells her what happened and it sounds like very few found out he went Elantrian anyway) and the very tight marital contract basically binds her as if she'd actually married the guy and she can't remarry or leave Arelon. Sarene hasn't fit in at home, so while she's disappointed, she is looking forward to a new court to work with. Even though the king is a moron that she practices Obfuscating Stupidity on, she makes a lot of new friends, teaches the ladies how to fence, and joins Raoden's band of rebels. She also reunited with her long-lost uncle Kiin, a good guy who won't tell her why he's estranged from the family. Sarene is a delight and I loved her and I felt for her not ever being wanted because she's so smart and how she doesn't deserve that.

(c) Hrathen is a priest (gyorn) of another country/religion and he is hell bent on converting Arelon and whatever other countries he can get to his religion. He's decided to do this by making everyone hate Elantrians, and doing some even more nasty deeds. I did not enjoy reading his chapters because he's an unpleasant creepy dude--however, as time goes on, he finds out that there's someone supposedly on his team that's far worse than he is. He also develops a certain respect and affection for Sarene even though they are rather distant opponents.

I was recently listening to an episode of Writing Excuses where the author of this book talks about how if you have a character people don't like, they will want to skim past their chapters and will be happy to see them end. I don't know for sure if he was referring to THIS book because he doesn't name the book that had this issue, but I do wonder if it was this one. 

"I've had a couple of times where the character was the problem. It took a little while to notice it. What would happen is in writing group, people were not wanting to get back to that character when their scene came up. This happens in all stories where you've got a large cast and you're switching between them. Sometimes people are going to be like, "I'm not excited to get back to this character." But what was happening with this one was habitually, people were like, "Oh, that one was a downer, too." Like it wasn't just like they were sad to get back to it. They were not excited when they were done with it, and they were happy to get off of it and back to other characters. Usually…

[Howard] Reading these chapters is like homework.

[Brandon] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I was running into that. So that was one way I identified, "Okay. This character's a problem.""

So yeah, that's about how I felt about Hrathen. You do need to read his chapters, but most of the time he's not a very pleasant person to be in the head in compared to the awesomeness of the other two, that I loved. I think the author was doing the best he could, and towards the end Hrathen becomes a better dude, but it was still kind of a chore to read about him. Apparently this is just me though and everyone else loves him the best, though.  I did appreciate a certain tricksiness in the guy, especially when he starts using a very unusual poison that really caused some crazy awesome plot developments. 

 

But really, I was here for Raoden and Sarene, and rooting for them to finally be able to get together, though that takes a damned long time and kinda like in Sleepless in Seattle, the book is proving that these two are MFEO before they can finally meet, and then later meet when Sarene finally finds out who this guy calling himself "Spirit" is (Raoden stays anonymous as an Elantrian so people will follow him for him, not his title). It did take a long-ass time to get there.

 

Anyway, overall I thought this book was very cool, though it did have some elements of it that I did not enjoy so much, i.e. Hrathen and dragging out how long it took to get Sarene to know who Raoden was. Two thirds of this book were pretty dang great for me and I liked how they went and while I am a bit confused on technicalities as to how a few things worked, I really enjoyed reading this. I haven't really been enjoying my reading material of late (hence a lack of reviews here), so being interested in what I was reading again was nice.

 

So...three and a half stars. The author has annotations online about writing the book and a short story in the world on his website if you're interested. (Weentsy disclaimer: I met the author once when he and his other writer friends dropped by my writing group when we were all in the same bookstore. He was nice.) 

The Vampire Knitting Club

By Nancy Warren.

When will I ever read a book that features knitting and find that it goes above about three stars? I guess not today either. A coworker saw this title and immediately told me about it, so I had to go get it. It had such potential from that alone, you know? 

Lucy is the daughter of anthropologists, and has always been close with her English grandmother. After a job/boyfriend loss, she heads to England to see her grandmother, except at first she sees her grandmother going down the street with a friend and then ducking out. Then Lucy finds out that her grandmother died 3 weeks ago and some cousin she's never heard of took care of everything and uh...what just happened? Even though we know where this is going from the title alone, it took a slow seven chapters or so to establish that yes, grandmother Agnes knows the local vampires and runs a nighttime knitting group for them. One of them, Rafe, is of course cute and nice. And when Agnes got murdered and one of her vampire friends showed up at the right time, the friend turned Agnes into a vampire. 

There's also some super creepy divey folks who are trying to buy Agnes's knitting shop, but Agnes doesn't want Lucy, her heir, to sell. Also, Lucy hires/rehires her grandmother's assistant, Rosemary, who is obviously divey but Lucy is a terrible knitter and needs the help. Lucy also meets a hot cop, though so far no romances are really starting up either way.  Oh, and it turns out Lucy is a hereditary witch and gets an awesome kitten familiar named Nyx. 

There's such potential in this series, but I felt like the execution was weak. It's a really slow start and the reader is just thinking "Oh, come on, let's get to the part where we know vampires exist already." The eventual bad guy just came out of nowhere to the point where I was all, I don't even remember this person at all and who are they? I love the potential of having a bunch of vampires as Baker Street Irregulars, but the idea just gets suggested and never executed in this book.  I love the potential of Lucy being a witch, but that barely gets started and then there's surprise family member issues that come up. 

Overall, I like the ideas but the execution just puts this, like every knitting book ever, in to the three star territory. 

Kill the Queen

By Jennifer Estep.

This is a pretty simple premise done with excellent execution.

Lady Everleigh Saffira Winter Blair (there's two lines of the family, "Summer" and "Winter") was orphaned at age 12 after her parents were assassinated. She was eventually brought to the royal castle of Seven Spire in her country of Bellona, where nobody particularly wants her but she's still a "working royal," albeit more literally than we use it for the British royal family because in addition to public appearances, Evie works in the kitchen and apprentices to the gemmaster and pays rent on her shitty castle room. She's forced to eat shit and like it all the time, with only a few people who even care about her. Not only is she politically powerless, she's magically powerless--in a world where virtually everyone has magic, Evie only has an enhanced sense of smell...or at least that's all she lets on to, because she's immune to magic and can disperse/wipe it out if she has to. As the queen points out, she has a knack for survival.

Evie is seventeenth in line to the throne and the Blair family has a lot of members in it. Until Crown Princess Vasilia objects most strongly to being forced to marry a prince of the neighboring Andvari kingdom and has a royal coup, poisoning/slaughtering virtually the entire royal family. Evie's nose lets her sniff out the poisoned wine, but she still has to brawl her way out of there, making off with the memory crystal she installed to record the event. On the advice of the dying queen, she makes her way to the gladiator troupe run by a former castle guard, Serilda Swanson. However, she's afraid to trust anyone at this point and doesn't admit to who she is when she asks to join the troupe. Serilda even smartassedly makes a crack about how ridiculous it would be if she claimed to be a long-lost princess, so she doesn't. She gets hired as the troupe's baker but is allowed to train as a gladiator as well, where she notices that the so-called "best friend" of the top gladiator, Paloma, is showing the same kind of jealousy and vicious tendencies that she's seen too many times at the palace. She tries to warn people, but when the jealous one makes her move, Evie manages to save Paloma...and ends up in a fight to the death. Suffice it to say that Evie learns well and uses her secret power as well. She makes friends within the troupe, which is great. Bellona has a long tradition of gladiators--the royal family started out that way--so Evie finally getting the hang of fighting and using her own skills and brains to compensate for her lack of brawn is heartening. 

Of course, Vasilia is going to be the worst ever--she's framed the Andvari and the head of the guard for the assassinations and once she gets officially crowned, she's going to war, and she suspects the Black Swan troupe (rightly) for not being on her side. Serilda is desperate to find a Blair--any Blair--to challenge the queen to the death. Isn't she lucky to already have one?

Anyway, this was GREAT. This is very much the story of a lady who's grown up losing and letting herself lose because she can never win all her life. After living through a massacre, she is all "FUCK THIS SHIT, I'M GONNA BE MYSELF AND SASS PEOPLE AND STAND UP," and it works. This is a lady who's learned tons of "useless skills" like baking and dancing--there's one scene where Evie's ability to do an extremely elaborate dance becomes very relevant--and she can use them to her advantage, in addition to her hidden skills and brains. So even though say, someone like myself can't do that sort of thing IRL, it's lovely to see someone be all "fuck this, I'm gonna sass back and fight back" and have it work out for her. Yay for vicarious living! 

There's a slight hint of a romance that doesn't come off yet between Lucas Sullivan, an Andvarian magier who relates to Evie on a certain power-yet-powerless (hint hint) level--but once he knows she's a potential future queen, he backs down due to his lower status. I reasonably assume this will change in the future, though, and it makes me wonder at the title of the next book, which has a preview chapter at the back. 

I look forward to seeing how things go in the future here, since it's indicated that another country, Moria, has been setting this up to try to take over all the kingdoms. I really liked this. Four and a half stars. 

The Hallowed Hunt

By Lois McMaster Bujold.

"I don't do this sort of thing. These things do not happen to me."

"They happen to you rather a lot, I'd say." -Ingrey and Ijara.

I've tried to get into this book and failed several times in the last however many years, but I was on a Chalion book jag again recently and decided "Hell with it, I am going to make myself read through this entire book." I had some extenuating circumstances, like being off from work and trapped indoors due to fire and at one point being at a 3-year-old's birthday party, that assisted in my getting this done. But...sigh, it's just not as good as the previous two books.

I should probably clarify that this isn't exactly a sequel to The Curse of Chalion / Paladin of Souls. It supposedly takes place in the same Quintarian universe where there's five gods and demons, but I have no idea if it's around the same time period or not (I've heard online it's supposed to be in the past, but hell if I know, it's not like there's different technology or anything to tell). While there's mentions of the various other countries in the world, this one, I'm not even sure WHAT country this is in--according to the Internet it's in some country called "the Weald," which is located...by Darthacan, I guess? There's a "hallow king," which I can't tell for the life of me is supposed to be a hereditary job OR an elected job. The answer in practicality seems to be "Both!" which never made any sense and since that is a crucial plot point, I felt like needed to be clarified. What I wouldn't give for some Basil Exposition here, because being thrown into this world without explanations didn't help much. 

The main difference here in the Weald is (a) the royalty's being handled...however, and (b) the fact that a person can sacrifice an animal and have its spirit go into a person, which is supposed to make them a better warrior or something and gives them some psychic sight in the way that a sorcerer/saint would have. Our hero, Ingrey kin Wolfcliff, was unpleasantly surprised at age 13 when his father forced him into a ritual in which wolves were put into them. Unfortunately, Dad picked a rabid one(!) and was dead within days, leaving Ingrey to lose his inheritance, undergo various treatments trying to undo it and bind the wolf in, being sent out of the country for a while, and getting a special dispensation to not be executed because it wasn't his fault/choice to have this done to him. Ingrey now works for a Lord Hetwar, who he is pretty loyal to for well, treating him well. You get the feeling that Ingrey just thinks he's living at the sufferance of others. He's not a happy guy. He is mopey.

Prince Boleso, the youngest and brattiest of the current hallow king's brood, ends up being hit in the head with an axe when he tries to rape one of his sister Princess Fara's handmaidens, Lady Ijara. Ingrey is sent to investigate the situation and bring Ijara to the capital, where she'll be tried and most likely executed. However, it's clear that something fucking disastrous was happening beyond rape--Boleso was planning a sick ritual and while he didn't get to rape Ijara, he did manage to sacrifice a leopardess into her body. Ingrey can relate. Indeed, he and Ijara pretty much fall in love at first sight even beyond their mutual plight, which doesn't seem like it'd go well since she's likely to be executed even if she's proven right spiritually. Ingrey tries to talk her into running, but she has faith she'll be proven right. But Ingrey has another problem--he finds himself attacking his charge periodically. With the assistance of an awesome super-pregnant Temple sorcerer named Hallana who comes to her friend Ijara's aid, they discover that a geas was put on Ingrey to kill Ijara. With the removal of the geas, Ingrey's wolf is unleashed again, and now he has the ability to sense others' spirit animals and has a psychic tie to Ijara, and develops a way to give commands with his voice. 

This also lets him in on the fact that his cousin, Earl Wencel kin Horseriver (married to Princess Fara), also seems to have a spirit animal. Ingrey and Wencel were never close and haven't spent much time together since their teen years, but it turns out that Wencel got possessed around the same time as Ingrey--except HOO BOY IS THERE MORE TO IT THAN THAT, though some aspects could have used some more explanation. Wencel has an inordinate interest in the haunted woods that Ijara inherited as her dowry that brought on dreams the one night she went there. Ijara's concerned about the souls of all who died there and wants to help them, and Wencel also has an interest in them... though I'm not even sure what to say about that. I'll try not to spoil here, but I will say that Horseriver hias his own weird curse going on--that will spread to Ingrey if anything happens to him--and Horseriver has a plan that is...incredibly weird. I'll attempt to cover it in the spoiler space, but it's..kinda hard to understand. 

There is also a random island prince named Jokol who loves his fiancee, poetry, and insisted on bringing an "ice bear" to the capital. I'm not sure what Jokol is doing here plotwise since he seems to be around for some slight amusement and that's about it. I could have had him around more, preferably involved in the plot. Hallana is also cool when she is on screen (she's a devotee of the Mother who unexpectedly got possessed by a temple demon of the Bastard's, and has to do some interesting things while pregnant to deal with that). 

If the previous books were featuring the Daughter (and somewhat the Father) and the Bastard, this one's supposed to feature the Son. He does crop up, but isn't quite as fascinating as the Bastard. But who could be, to be fair. It turns out that Ingrey is some kind of kin shaman--how this came about, why he's the only one left, etc. isn't answered--but that does give him an ability to help any dead person whose soul was mixed with an animal, because only a shaman can separate the two so that the human can move on to the gods. So what's gonna happen when Ingrey dies and nobody's around to help him? Uh.....yeah. 

Quote Corner:

• "Curse that horse urine." -Ingrey after drinking with Jokol.
• "I was imagining the most bizarre things befalling you." "Did they include a six-hundred-pound ice bear and a pirate poet?" -Ijara and Ingrey after his night of drinking. 
• "In a perfectly calm, level voice, Ingrey said, "I am infuriated beyond bearing to have been so used." -Ingrey on his total rage at being geased. Uh.....

Overall, I think I give it three and a half stars. It's not bad, but could have been better, I guess? Or I expected more? I just feel like this should have been baked a little more. 

The Curse of Chalion

By Lois McMaster Bujold.

Apparently I neglected to write a review of this book back when I first read it, so since I recently reread it, here it is.

Lupe dy Cazaril (he goes by his last name or Caz) is a broken down ex-soldier and ex-slave when we meet him. He's finally been rescued from his slavery, he's exhausted, and all he can think to do is to go back to his old employer, the dy Baocia family, and hopes that the dowager Provincara will be kind to him and give him a not-too-taxing job. She does...as the secretary/tutor to her granddaughter, the Royesse (princess) Iselle.

The dowager's daughter Ista is the dowager royina (queen) of their country of Chalion. Her husband's long dead, his son from his first marriage Orico is ruling the throne, but it's not going well--hence why Ista was married off to provide more heirs, Iselle and her little brother Teidez. They're all living away from the capital, most likely because Ista's reportedly gone off her rocker since her husband's death. Caz does an excellent job of instructing Iselle and her equally awesome best friend/handmaiden Betriz, who are really kind, nice, fierce, adorable ladies. Teidez, alas, is a bit of a spoiled hothead. But when the royal siblings are called to the capital because Orico's never been able to impregnate his wife, they're all thrust into the midst of horrible danger. A pair of asshole siblings, Martou and Dondo dy Jironal, are running things. Martou is the chancellor and basically running everything, while Dondo is a sadistic rapist asshole--and guess who Iselle's just been betrothed to against her will?

With no other options, Caz is willing to lay down his life in order to have Dondo killed via death magic, by using a spell that kills him as well as the other. It works, in that Dondo dies, but Caz has his life spared presumably because of Iselle's prayers--but he develops a weird magical tumor that will kill him. However, as long as he's alive, he will do his damndest to save his ladies, including getting Iselle married off to someone else before this can happen again. 

Oh, and I haven't mentioned yet that there's a curse on the royal family (which Ista tried to break and failed) and only a man who lays his life down for the house of Chalion three times can get it removed? But how can a man die three times? Hm.....

Anyway, this one's freaking brilliant. Caz is heartwarming and heartbreaking, Iselle and Betriz are just awesome, as is her other marital option. It's very sweet and fierce and delightfully done well. Five stars. 

Diamond Fire

By Ilona Andrews.

Previous book here. 

Diamond Fire is a transitional novella finishing off the story of Nevada and Connor and transitioning to a new trilogy featuring Nevada's middle sister Catalina. After a very brief narration by Nevada about meeting her fiance's mother (who is really cool), we switch to Catalina, who is doing the wedding planning along with little sister Arabella after the first two didn't work out. In addition to the usual wedding juggling crap, they're dealing with an influx of Connor's mom's relatives from Spain, about half of whom are incredibly dubious at best. And when the family tiara with its big blingy stone is stolen, Connor's mom asks Catalina to look into it rather than Nevada, who's busy.

Catalina's on the case, but has an easier time finding other family crimes going on around the house. Like poisoned wedding cake and blackmail and various other bad shit going on. I certainly love a teen girl investigator, and Catalina does a good job of it. So I enjoyed the new voice and all that. And Connor's mom, who is cool. 

On the other hand, a few things in this felt a bit weak to me. For example, Catalina has a whammy of a power that she mostly keeps under wraps because people who are affected by it pretty much lose their damn minds after something like 20 minutes and she holds herself back from non-family for that reason. In this book she figures out a way to use it for interrogation and somehow everything's just easy and fine now? It kind of felt like it came out of nowhere-ish that she could be cool with using it and nobody is getting monumentally messed up any more. And as for the resolving of the tiara issue...I'll discuss it below the spoiler cut but I can't for the life of me figure out if I like it or think it's bad or clever or funny or weak or WHAT. 

So...three stars. Fun read but some things just kinda bugged me. 

Witchmark

By C.L. Polk.

I liked this book, but it really throws you into the world with like, no explanation of anything and I had a bit of a problem with that.

This is some alternate universe where the time period is around the advent of the car and takes place in the nation of Aeland, which is at war with another country. Magic exists and witches are persecuted if caught--but that usually happens to the lowborn ones and the highborn ones have other fates. The highborn witches categorize you into two categories:

• Spell-Singers who can do spells to fix the weather because otherwise the weather in Aeland would be terrible and unlivable
• Everyone else with any magical talent that doesn't involve the weather is considered a Secondary. And a slave. They are forcibly bound to a Spell-Singer and used as a battery. They are generally abused as far as I can tell.

Our narrator, a highborn Secondary formerly known as Sir Christopher Miles Hemsley, ran away, went to war and got his medical degree, changed his name to Miles Singer, and has been working very hard with veterans who appear to be losing their sanity and going homicidally insane.  He wanted to be a healer and his skills lie in that direction. You will probably reasonably figure out that these folks have been possessed in some way long before Miles figures it out, though I'll say he's trying his best to find some physical cause so nobody will suspect him of magic. Good luck with that.

Miles gets charged by a dying patient to figure out how he got murdered, but Miles is very much hampered by this by things like his boss having the body destroyed. He does, however, make friends with a foreign fellow named Tristan Hunter (who appears to be this world's equivalent of a fairy) who's investigating a related issue. And by friends I mean "would like to be sexy friends, hubba hubba." For those of you wondering how gayness works in this world, it sounds like heterosexual marriage is enforced and gay marriage doesn't exist in Aeland, and Secondaries are used for breeding purposes. Whee. 

Unfortunately for Miles, he's forcibly reunited with his Spell-Singer sister Grace, who he got raised to be Secondary to. Grace promises not to bind him, but their father is a horrible person and the political situation going on, well... this goes very badly for Miles. He's in deep trouble, and when he finally figures out what's going on with her patients, HOO BOY is that a big problem to solve.

Miles is a personable and sympathetic fellow and I liked Tristan, he's very nice, as is Miles's friend Robin. I wasn't quite sure what to make of Grace, who seems goodhearted but at the same time corrupted by her family/political situation in a very "ouch" way.

But...there's no exposition in this book, it's all total immersion. It takes forever to say, figure out what's going on and why is there a war and why is this happening to veterans and things like that. I really could have used some enlightenment as to the details earlier on, sigh. And I do find scenes where everyone's throwing big magic around to be confusing. 

So...three and a half stars overall. I feel like I needed it to be a bit clearer for me, but it was still pretty good.