Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Voyage of the Damned

By Frances White.

This is the fantasy equivalent of “And Then There Were None.” There is MUCH to talk about below the spoiler cut, to the point where there will be LAYERS of spoiler space. 

The land of Concordia is based off twelve animals/tribes/territories (and one exiled thirteenth tribe that rebelled and is now shut out), all brought together. Supposedly. Per each land, one person is Blessed with a magical power and they will run their lands. The Blessed heirs are to go on a 12 day boat ride together and then make a pilgrimage to a mountain before they inherit.

Our narrator, Ganymedes “Dee” Piscero, is the heir to the lowest ranked land, Fish. He’s a bisexual, food-loving, living embodiment of the Fool card in tarot (especially in his very shiny outfit, designed to upset everyone). He’s also been forced to keep the secret that he did NOT inherit a Blessing, something that has made him feel like shit since his teen years. After he’s forced to board the ship, Dee starts working on his plan to get kicked out of the group, hopefully meaning that he can get out of this situation.

However, someone else has A Plan, which involves killing off all the other Blessed. The first death of the future Empress is horrifying (also in the few minutes that you meet her, you like her), and it just gets worse from there. It also looks like someone’s figured out how to deactivate someone’s Blessing, which leads to several deaths. One death in particular really hits Dee hard, and motivates him to find who’s doing it. Also motivating Dee is insta-befriending Grasshopper, the 6-year-old Blessed, and swearing to protect her no matter what. Grasshopper clearly needs some love and it’s an insta-pairing of AWWWWWW throughout the book. Another surprising pairing for Dee is hitting it off with Wyatt, the Bear Blessed who has some kind of mystery illness he won’t elaborate on. Even though Dee is still really in pain from his previous relationship, Dee seems to insta-attach to other misfits, especially ones that care about him. 

Of course the other suspects/victims have varying levels of mysteries and issues. Was Leofric as loyal to his Empress as he claims to be? What does Shinjino the monk think is the overall plan of the murderer? What does Nergui the Spider know? And why does the ship seem to have ghost sightings periodically? Some Blessed are cranky loner types that just want to be left alone. Jasper is VERY STRESSED that magic is going to poop out and the thirteenth tribe will break into Concordia. Cordelia is in HEAVY mourning for her beloved brother Lysander. There’s lots of good suspect material here. It’s also a challenge when culturally people do not want to reveal what their Blessing is.

(One note before I go into heavy spoiler space, because it’s the sort of thing that gave me major squick: bodily dismemberment becomes a frequent plot point towards the end. I’m still squicking, actually. My least favorite thing in the book.) 

Everyone thinks Dee is powerless (politically, even if they don’t know he isn’t magically), lowest rank, useless to everyone, and a total fool. But Dee is a genuinely good hearted dude, which seems to be rare in this world. He’s also smarter than he comes off as–at one point he’s dubbed a “moronic genius,” and one has to agree even if you don’t think he’s a moron. Dee has felt like crap his entire life–I REALLY RELATE TO THIS–thanks to his shitty father, and the book is about how he learns to rise above that and see his own worth, and not just through the eyes of others who care about him, either.

Beyond that, I think that’s as much as I can say to set up the book before the spoiler cut. Overall, I think it is VERY well done, even if I do think one particular plot element covered in the spoiler cut is… well, I have Concerns on that topic. I’m giving it 4.5 stars, as it is near epic territory in its own way. You like mystery? You like gay romance? You like um, weird romance? This may be the book for you!

Psyche and Eros

By Luna McNamara.

This is a thoughtful retelling of one of my favorite Greek love stories. Eros is a rather callow, shallow-ish deity who isn't into the idea of love, hates his adopted* mother Aphrodite and doesn't like his twin Eros either, and pretty much hangs out with Zephyrus and his pets and that's it. He does rather passively prank/hurt Aphrodite a bit, which leads to him accidentally getting cursed to love Psyche, a princess that Aphrodite's taken a dislike to. If she sees his face, he'll be driven away. So Eros resorts to creative methods (shape shifting, for example) to be around her without setting it off.

* I think the author made some uh, adjustments here and there.

Psyche is awesome. She's born with a destiny, she learns from Atalanta how to be a badass, and she's a good egg. She's quite surprised to be ambushed into marriage to a "minor" god, but the two of them manage to get to hang out together enough that they work well as a couple and like each other as well as love. Then Psyche gets pregnant, has to satisfy her curiosity, and kaboom. The other half of the novel is the two of them trying to fight their way back to each other, and darned if it doesn't work.

I think I'm not feeling particularly elaborate in description this morning, but I did enjoy the book quite a lot. The jerkier tendencies of some people tone down, some deities aren't so bad after all, and Eros and Psyche get more depth from being with each other. Four stars. 

Full Speed to a Crash Landing

By Beth Revis.

Disclaimer: I read this very short novella when sleep deprived and that might explain that I’m missing some processing of what was going on here.

This is a space adventure in which we meet our narrator, Ada Lamarr, when she’s got a hole in her ship and she’s seriously about to RUN OUT OF OXYGEN before she gets rescued by a government ship also there to loot around. Ada is charming and insouciant and Super Helpful on volunteering to help the crew do a salvage mission on a dangerous planet. We reasonably presume she’s up to something, but Ada is not the kind of narrator to let you in on what’s secretly going on. She’s the sort of person who’s honest about what she reveals, but she won’t reveal everything. 

Ada also has the insta-hots for the brains of the operation, Rian, and it appears to be a mutual scheme-y soulmate connection. Both suspect they know what the other one is up to or at least they can deduce it. Their connection and vibe is super hot.

That said, I’m not sure what the heck was going on here. Sol-Earth is a dying planet having ecological disasters and Ada might just be motivated enough to do something about it, even if only for the right price. Some of the people on the ship also seem inclined in this direction. Some kind of Secret Information is being gotten. And then Ada poofs away, leaving a fuming Rian behind to write reports and try to figure out what the hell is going on. End novella!

So, on the one hand, fun writing and fun style and chemistry. On the other hand, I’m not sure what was going on here and dare I say it…why isn’t this longer and more explanatory? The writing style seems to assume we get what Ada is talking about, and while I know nobody wants to be all Basil Exposition in a sci-fi adventure, I got less of it because I didn’t quite get what was going on in the world. This review does a better job of getting it than I did.

Three and a half stars. 

Truly Madly Magically

By Hazel Beck.

Previous book here.

I’m still not sure why I’ve continued with this series because the same sorts of stuff that annoys me–super magical powers nobody’s heard of out of nowhere, romances not all that baked, etc. still bother me in this one. And yet, here I am. At least they’re from the library.

Ellowyn and Zander were together in high school, then had some kind of ugly breakup and have been publicly kinda hating each other ever since, albeit they’ve toned it down around their friend group. However, secretly every Beltane they fuck like bunnies. Due to Ellowyn getting randomly poisoned at Beltane this year (see previous book), her birth control failed, and now it’s time to publicly admit she’s pregnant and get back together with him.

I’m usually a fan of old-loves-get-back-together romances, but I wasn’t really into this one or really get why they were all MFEO either. It sounds like Their Giant Breakup was entirely because Zander’s mom was sick and he just…couldn’t spit it out (somewhat literally), but why the hatred and vitriol for years? It seemed too much for so little. 

What I did enjoy with this book was that there’s the final showdown/competition/um,whatever the heck this was between our group’s new coven and the totally evil, smugass bitches that make up the Joywood. You can probably guess how it ends, but I thought it went reasonably and fairly for the group, and they managed to thwart these awful people.

Three stars. 

A Letter to the Luminous Deep

By Sylvie Cathrall.

I was intrigued by this but had some reservations between the formal/flowery language and the story involving academia (which I hate and have escaped), but stick with it. This is a slow-ish but intriguing creeping mystery going on.

This takes place on another planet where people used to live in the sky(?) and then something happened and there's only one landmass left and everyone lives down below in the ocean. (I'm a little confused on the tech since people are literally surviving underwater and yet they just got cameras. Seems like cameras would be easier?!) The Cidnosin family is famous for (a) being academic sorts and (b) their mother designing "The Deep House," a fancy house down below. There are three children: Arvist the pretentious artist (awful at first, but he improves by the end), Sophy the scholar, and E, the Dickinson-esque homebody with a Malady of the Mind (OCD/anxiety) who generally stays home and doesn't socialize. E notices a strange thing near the house (dubbed "The Structure") that she assumes her brother must have made--he lies and claims he did!--but it seems to have created itself. E started a pen pal romance with another nerdy/adorable scholar, Henerey, and on their second meeting, they met at the Deep House to investigate it.

This book starts a year later, after the Deep House has been destroyed by a seaquake and E and Henerey are presumed dead. Their grief-stricken siblings, Sophy and Vyerin (Henerey's bother), start a correspondence of their own, sharing their sibling's letters and recounting the mysterious expedition that Sophy was going on during her sister's romance. (Which is quiet but sweet.) As they read on, they start coming to the creeping conclusion that Something Is Going On Down Below, which their mother was aware of and other characters start becoming more aware of as time goes on. Reminded me of The Abyss quite a lot,  I'll put it that way. I'll restrain myself from going into spoilers even though I wanna, but THIS SOUNDS SUPER EFFING COOOOOOOOL and I look forward to the second book and seeing what else people find in this hidden world. 

Happily the book isn't too academic or overdone in the language for my tastes--there's some pretentious people in it--one of them very obviously played for comedy, and one villainous guy--but I was able to take the drama and it didn't devolve into total pettiness or boredom the way that most academic books do for me. The narrative is all letters between various people, but you do get exactly what's going on and it gets more and more intriguing and exciting as everyone's experiences tie in together. I'll be waiting eagerly for the next book. Four stars. 

Installment Immortality

By Seanan McGuire.

(publishes in March 2025. I was permitted to read an ARC of this through NetGalley. Thank you very much, generous benefactor! :) 

Previous book here. Spoiler space.

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

By Seanan McGuire.

I haven’t read this series for a few books now. I looked at the plot of Where the Drowned Girls Go and was all, “oh hell no, I can’t read this, too dark in the 2020’s” and so far, even though I am psychologically better (OR WAS BEFORE THE ELECTION ANYWAY), I still don’t wanna read How Awful Whitehorn Is. Since then, another book, Lost in the Moment and Found, has come out (albeit now I can’t find it IRL) and now there’s this one, which I found at the library and was all, “hey, maybe I’ll see how this series is doing.” 

Well, this one clearly takes place in an order where people have returned from Whitehorn, and features Antsy, a girl whose world was a world full of doors. What I managed to pick up is that she worked happily in that world until she found out that she prematurely aged while doing all that door opening and nobody warned her about that–she’s 9 years old but looks 16–and thus she ended up at Eleanor’s. 

Once people figure out she could possibly find their doors (particularly a creepy magically-beautiful-but-awful girl named Seraphina), people must flee and a Quest must happen, and the usual gang goes to a few other worlds, including the world that rejected Kade–poor Kade, the one kid who didn’t wanna go back–and a happy dinosaur land. But the real fight is Antsy returning to her own world and dealing with the corruption that’s happened there, and the debate about whether or not to warn people about the years they are losing. 

This book does explain a lot more about how the doors and worlds work, which I really liked and appreciated. I was somewhat “uh, feel like I need to read the last book,” which is totally on me. Beyond that,  I still feel like I’m not as into this series (maybe I just think Sumi is really Much and Christopher’s skeleton obsession is also kinda much…the kids kinda tend to be 1-2 note-y, unfortunately), but this was well done, even if I’m not as into the series as I was? I may pick up the preceding book sometime to fill myself in.

Three and a half stars. 

The False Princess

By Eilis O’Neal.

(Also read in audiobook, so I have no clue on the spellings and am taking a guess on those.) 

Princess Nalia finds out the day after her sixteenth birthday that she’s lived a lie her entire life. A prophecy said that the king and queen would only be able to have one child and she might die before she turned 16, so a ringer baby was substituted in and the original was raised anonymously in a convent. Now that the original Nalia has thwarted the prophecy, the false princess–now referred to by her given name of Sinda–is quickly kicked out, with a small bag of gold (enough to support her for a year) and a few dresses, to go live with her only surviving relative. 

Now that is fucking COLD. We never find out what it was like for Sinda to be raised by the king and queen (if she was), but these people can’t even say “thank you for your service” or “we loved you” or anything beyond “I’ll pray for her.” COLD, COLD, COLD and oddly enough, it’s only the villain of the piece who even comments on this! The king and queen had no contact with their biological kid and I wonder if they even tried to attach to the one she had, assuming they just had her to get killed in their kid’s place. (This is all the weirder considering that nobody actually tried to kill the public princess for sixteen years.) I think the author should have covered that, but alas, she did not. Sinda’s trauma is hard for her to figure out, and she tries to be stoic, but she’s so accommodating that she doesn’t even protest what happened, and that’s something that’s commented on. 

We find out that Sinda’s mom abandoned her after birth, her father was depressed and agreed to give her up, and her aunt isn’t mean, but she’s very taciturn and not a welcoming or loving personality.  Sinda is forced to live the life of a peasant when she has no working peasant skills or talents, and the only guy who’s interested in her just wants her for her former status. It’s not going very well when surprise, she busts out with magic! Turns out her abandoning mother had magic and her aunt was hoping it wouldn’t manifest. But now that the impersonation spell put on Sinda is wearing off, her own natural magic starts busting out all over. This catapults Sinda into a better life. She can’t join the wizards’ college because she’s a broke peasant, but she does find herself a lovely eccentric mentor, Philantha, who I thought was great and should have been more involved in the plot than Sinda lets her be, alas.

Sinda also reunites in the city with Kiernan, her longtime best friend/obvious soulmate who she’s never gotten romantically involved with (or even really conceived of doing so) given their past differing status, and now current differing status. It’s very obvious that Kiernan is ride-or-die for her, no matter how clueless she may be or how she periodically freaks out and tries to drive him away or thinks he’ll walk out on her after a brief incident. (Everyone else in the book is all, “girl, get a clue!”) Per Kiernan, who’s still at the castle, she finds out that the current princess wants to meet her, and that girl (previously known as Orion) sneaks out to do so. Sinda’s surprised that the two of them feel a literal pull towards each other as a result of the spell put on them for making Sinda resemble Nalia. 

But after feeling the pull to go to the castle one dawn, Sinda comes across something that totally tears apart everything she’s been told about this situation. The kingdom’s about to make a giant mistake, and Sinda and Kiernan realize that they’re probably the only people who can investigate what went on, and that they’re not likely to be believed.. Sinda does need to let other people in more (and it’s kind of irritating that she adamantly refuses to let her mentor in on the issue), and she does need to figure out what her motivations are here for saving a kingdom that wasn’t the nicest to her, all things considered. I did enjoy the mystery of what had happened and how S&K had to investigate it–involving psychic powers, lies, magical ties and a longstanding grudge. It works.

Overall, I really enjoyed listening to this book. Even if Sinda’s behavior gets a bit “oh girl, don’t do that!” for her and well, everyone, the mystery is cool and the book works, even if I think a few things could be elaborated on more. Nice resolution, too. Four stars.

Apprentice to the Villain

By Hannah Nicole Maehrer.

Previous book here. This one’s also been audiobooked. 

I have really gotten into this series, and found this book to be even more fun. There’s plenty of plot going on, starting with a rescue, a fake death and dramatic reveals. In this book, our evil heroes get outed, which leads to complications–and per the title, a promotion for Evie.

King Benedict continues his quiet path of evil. Did I mention there’s dramatic reveals? There’s a lot of that going on here, like “wow, so THAT’s what happened to X?!” level of stuff. There’s also a prophecy and the issue that the kingdom of Rennedawn seems to be running low on magic due to the king. Our gang of evil people end up traveling around, meeting all kinds of interesting creatures, and it’s a good time. I found Evie’s encounters with creatures to be particularly delightful, even and especially the time she’s drunk off a magic flower and has to solve a riddle. 

Evie’s family takes center stage in this one, with finding out what happened to people–a lot of ‘em–and one person going in the opposite direction. While she hasn’t exactly gone magical herself, she does have a few surprisingly odd magical things happen to her, which is intriguing. It’s implied that while Evie’s a good person, one should watch out for a good person who’s been betrayed, and has some incentive to level up in her work. 

As for our hot villain, well, yeah, it’s clear these two are in love, and Tristan has all these secret “awww” moments about Evie that are quite endearing. There is one moment in particular–it involves pink–where I just flat out died and it was adorable. However, Tristan is still in full “I’m evil, I can’t have love” mode and there’s that prophecy thing again. He has an encounter with destiny that doesn’t sound good, but will things go that way?

The other characters also get some depth, particularly Becky, as we find out about her interesting past. There’s less rivalry going on between Becky the Order Muppet and Evie the Chaos Muppet, which is a lovely development. 

I have really enjoyed listening to these one right after the other, and am sad to be done for the time being. However, I did find out that this series is based off the author’s TikTok series, “The Morally Gray Villain’s Personal Assistant,” and I am working my way through 200+ TikToks (and I don’t even like how TikTok runs, so that’s saying something. Why must it just constantly replay the video over and over instead of auto-playing the series?). I note the video series is the same characters, but different plots from the books. 

(YouTubes of 1-20, 21-40, and 41-60 here.)

Four stars. I’m having a lot of fun with this. 

Big Little Spells

By Hazel Beck.

Previous book here.

This book features Rebekah, Emerson’s slightly younger sister,  the family rebel. After being dragged back to St. Cyprian, the Joywood coven, who hates them, kinda has to acknowledge that they have powers despite the coven saying they did not. This translates into “We’re going to force you to go back to high school” (in their late twenties?!?!? SO weird) and be schooled, punished, and humiliated while being re-tested again. And the Joywood plans on them failing. 

Okay, so that plot is straight up weird. Adult prom, anyone, with random teens? Dragging in their friends who did pass? The sister’s absentee jerk parents being dragged back to town to be snooty at them? It’s Rebekah’s nightmare, of course. Rebekah also has some issues with hottie immortal Nicholas Frost, who was some kind of weird mentor to her as a teen, but squealed on her when she had her moment of rage. It’s one of those destiny things, we’re told. 

I don’t know why I went out and got this book right after finding the first book to be a three star one. It has similar issues to the first one, in which I like the voice but am kind of confused on the magical-ness (I’ll say I get more of it here, but my confusion is more like “high school!?” rather than “how’d this come about?” That said, I still want to know what “Confluence Warrior” and “Chaos Diviner” REALLY mean.), and the romance is another kinda-insta-one with another stoic man that doesn’t show much personality. So those aspects of it are still “not loving that.”

However, Rebekah’s voice? Awesome. After being failed on her pubertatum (a word everyone hates), Rebekah refused to be wiped, and had herself a little magical kaboom-ish sort of incident before she blew the hell out of town. Nowadays she works to suppress her magical stuff, got a lot of piercings and tats (a no-no), and is very much “This is who I am, I’m not a rule-following school nerd.” You absolutely felt Rebekah’s pain and feelings being forced to confront all of what she left behind and the social shaming she got there. So if you’re a rebel sort, you’ll relate to this one big time, I think. 

Also, the ending? Another kaboom moment, and I really liked it! Good job! There’s also a subplot of witches dying suspiciously young, which is presumably being set up for the next book. 

Three and a half stars.