2015 Review Round-Up: YA Fantasy: The Girl with Ghost Eyes, M. H. Boroson

The Girl With Ghost Eyes
M. H. Boroson
ISBN: 9781940456362
Haunting story of a magical Chinatown during the Chinese Exclusion Act days.
Read December 2015

I'm torn.  I enjoyed this story, but once I figured out the author was male, it made me feel just a little bit squicky.  There's a lot to unpack here in terms of cultural and gender roles, and internalized racism and sexism, and the juxtaposition of a very traditional YA sort of tentative girl-power heroine of color with a white male author was a little offputting.  I'm not sure if that says bad things about me, or about our culture, to be totally honest, because the book was really quite good, and the Author's Note seemed to indicate that care was taken with the language and the customs represented.

All that aside, this was a rollicking good ghost story, and I really enjoyed every minute of it.  The nasty creepy ghosties, the relentless focus on "face" and reputation, the tensions between the old ways and the new, between China and America, between folkways and revolvers, all made for a tense and exciting story.  Characters were vibrant, the plot was juicy and twisty without being unnecessarily convoluted, and our main character was flawed, desperate, and resourceful.  Also I want to be a Buddist were-tiger in my next role-playing game, because YES PLEASE.

Fascinating, interesting, and a rocking good read from start to finish.

Fairy Tale / Fantasy: Uprooted, Naomi Novik

Uprooted
Naomi Novik
ISBN: 9780804179034
Beautiful and haunting fantasy-reworking of Beauty and the Beast.

This is the best book I've read all year, and I have read some truly mindblowing, amazing, masterful works of art this year.  This is it.  This is everything I ever wanted in a story forever and ever.  This is what I want to write myself when I grow up.  Nothing against any of the other wonderful authors and artists I've seen so far, or will see later in the year, this is just the pinnacle right here.

I simply and truly have no words.  If you know that this is a Beauty and the Beast re-telling, that it's set in a fantasy kingdom with an encroaching malevolent Wood, and a politically-unstable dynasty, and an enmity with the neighboring human kingdom, you have everything you need to know to read it and be thrilled and swept away.

I can't wait to read it again!

Fantasy: The Paper Magician, Charlie N. Holmberg

The Paper Magician
Charlie N. Holmberg
ISBN: 9781477823835
Read January 16, 2015
Vaguely Victorian, vaguely steampunk, world with vague characters & vague setting that all leech the interest value of a really nifty magical system.

I really wanted to like this so much more than I did.  It promised Victorian manners and magical origami, and "forbidden" necromantic magics!  Sadly, it didn't really deliver.

First off, it was a quick, easy, read.  It wasn't written poorly in a grammatical or technical sense, no typos or fragments or strange jump-cuts.  It all flowed quite well.

All of which wouldn't normally be considered an accomplishment, except that the actual story and plotting seem very much in need of an editor, or perhaps a more experienced author.

We start out great:  Ceony Twill has just graduated from magic school, and is about to get her magical material assignment - the one man-made material she'll be able to magically influence for the rest of her life.  She desperately wants to be a metalworker, but she is forced into bonding with paper due to a serious deficit in the number of active practicioners.

All of this sounds so great!  Sadly, that's about all the backstory and interest and personal character motivation we get, as everything is instantly sidetracked into a somewhat sketchy mentor-student love-affair/rescue attempt that comprises a slightly maddening flashback-ridden waltz through the secondary character's heart (thus meaning we learn more about him than we do the main character herself)  while she learns about him and what kind of man he is, and how much she's growing to love him - all inside of one short day.

Other minor missteps include a waste of a psuedo-Victorian/Edwardian English setting (please do research, even though we all speak English, we speak and behave in very different ways given different locations and time-periods!) and a villainess with absolutely no character to her at all.

Urgh. What a sad waste of a really great concept.

  

House of Shadows, Rachel Neumeier

House of Shadows
Rachel Neumeier
ISBN: 9780316072779
Re-Read January 6, 2014

Fantasy: Magecraft, bardic magic, geisha, mysterious cats, portentous curses, Princes, Kings, and dragons.

Karah is the beautiful sister, and Nemienne the one who doesn't quite fit in, and that's good, because after the death of their father, both sisters will move out into the larger world to support their remaining five sisters.

Nemienne, with her smoky, shadowed eyes, ends up apprenticed to the master Mage Akennes, while Karah finds her beauty a perfect fit for the cultured world of the Keiso, the geisha-like women of leisure who aim to become wealthy kept women of the nobility.  Despite the divergence of their paths, these two sisters keep spiraling in towards each other, and they are key to unraveling a mystery, and perhaps preventing a murder.

I originally read this sometime in summer 2012, and I enjoyed it immensely.  I loved the political twists, the cultural details, the details of the various types of magic (especially the bardic work) and the quirks and details of the individual characters.  The "bardic sorcery" was so interesting and well-described that I'm pretty sure I emailed Patrick Rothfuss with a semi-coherent yet enthusiastic recommendation immediately afterwards.

Unreservedly recommended, and just as good on a second read-through.

One teeny-tiny niggle: some of the names are unfortunately close: Nemienne is the sister, Narienneh is the matriarch of the Keiso (geisha) house.  Lily is a nasty deisa (geisha-trainee) and Leilis is a sort of chatelaine of the establishment.  A little frustrating.  On the other hand, if you must name your male character Tod, I have no objections to spelling it Taudde in order to make it more alien, and therefore palatable.  I still reserve the right to roll my eyes just a smidge.

Masks, E. C. Blake

Masks, E. C. Blake
ISBN: 9780756407599
Read December 22, 2013

Fantasy: A pampered child of the magical aristocracy is shocked and challenged when her rite of passage goes horribly wrong, branding her a traitor and a threat to her magical, god-like ruler.

I like stories where magical implements (collars, masks, gloves, brands, diadems) are used as indicators of caste, class, or magical/mundane ability/profession.  Apparently, lots of other people do also, because they turn up all over the place.

In this iteration, the Masks are required in public for everyone over the age of 15, and they denote profession and magical talent through color, tint, and design.  Mara's father is a high-ranking Masker, and as his daughter, she's expected to inherit both his magical ability and his court position in due time.  Instead, the Masking goes horribly wrong, and Mara is thrown free of her society and the implied magical caste system it enforces.

I knew going in that this was going to be a series, and I hesitated, because first books often suffer from cliffhanger syndrome, but I read it anyway, and I'm glad I did.

I'm very fond of the worldbuilding so far, I'm deeply impressed with the thought taken in handling the implications of magic and Masking, and I finish the book finding myself not trusting anyone, not even Mara.  Pretty nifty.

The only real downside is that Mara is fast on the way to being a stereotypical "super magic girl" and while that doesn't HAVE to be badly done, it very rarely escapes that fate.  I'm hoping something will help ground her out or provide a magical counterbalance in the next book.

I do have to also say that while I do think that most authors ignore the necessary bodily functions in their epic fantasy quest narratives, the number and amount of mentions given to attending to the necessaries was a little amusing, but I don't think it was meant to be.

Secondhand Charm, Julie Berry

Secondhand Charm, Julie Berry.  ISBN: 9781599905112

Read August 13

 

So I re-read Amaranth Enchantment recently, and was reminded of how thin it really was - everything so twee and interconnected and massive plotholes unraveling at the slightest serious thought.  This one is MUCH better.  Not exactly what I had expected, and I'm a bit disappointed in that, but it was interesting and fun.

 

First off - the bad. 

 

The medicine/study is a red-herring.  It's teased as a story of a studious girl heading off to a medical university to become a healer, and that actually is right, as far as it goes.  Sadly, it's mostly the first-act mcguffin to get Evie out of her village and onto the road so that events can occur.  I would really have liked to see more evidence of the healing - instead of it simply being a magical gift, to instead show more of what she did with the Chancellor: actual herb-lore and medicine.  Without it, she's well on the way to turning into a boring magic dream girl.

 

The king is USELESS.  Doesn't he have parents?  Courtiers?  He's always on his own except for Annalise, which is somewhat suspect, considering all the flunkies she has around her.  Considering he's the lynchpin of the whole story, I found him a bit on the irritating side.

 

Coincidences again... like Amaranth, this story relies heavily on a smallish cast of characters who keep showing up in convenient (or inconvenient) times and places.  Unlike Amaranth, it actually somewhat works in this story without seriously violating suspension of disbelief, but it still was a bit heavy-handed (especially the circus).  

 

The meh.

 

Aiden.  Eh.  More a cipher than anything else, and honestly comes off as well as he does because the King is so flamingly useless in comparison. 

 

The continual "bad luck" of the initial journey.  This is somewhat in the line of the coincidental repeated meetings of the main cast, but it was less of an irritant while reading, and more of an after-the-read thought of how really unlikely that whole scenario was, and how it could have been changed easily without altering the plot. 

 

The good:

 

The representation of Evie's "companion" was excellent.  I loved that he didn't really know or think about or care about much beyond Evie the person.  I loved the impetuous nature that causes her problems that he then regrets, I love the beauty/terror dichotomy.  I love the co-dependent feel for that relationship; "if you really loved me you would...." Really lovely touchpoint through the whole story.  

 

I really like Annalise.  She is a perfect little sociopath, and her storyline was very nice.  Would have liked a bit more background on how her relationships got going, and how everyone else doesn't know that princesses of her realm are what they are, but those are niggling details.  Annalise was quite nice of herself.  I loved the complication that her relationship with Evie created for the climax, and that her total blissful inability to see that she was a sociopath made her a little less "one-dimensional-grandiose-evil."

 

Loved Grandfather.  That was a very clever touch, and one that isn't seen very often.  I figured something was off-kilter there, but I wasn't expecting it to twist the way it actually twisted.  That was quite enjoyable.

 

So overall, Secondhand Charm: Not amazing, but much better than Amaranth, and a sweet little heroine who gets where she's going through dogged determination, grit, and persistance. 

Reserved for the Cat vs Steadfast, Mercedes Lackey

Reserved for the Cat, Mercedes Lackey (published 2007)

Re-read August 9, 2013

ISBN - 978-0756403621

 

Steadfast ("reviewed" on my reading page June 10-15, 2013)

 

While reading, I felt that the plotline of Steadfast was very similar to Reserved for the Cat, but then I read that way back in 2007 when it came out, and my memory was a bit fuzzy.  I re-read Reserved yesterday, and they really are quite similar.

 

I have to wonder if that is on purpose, because the whole of Reserved for the Cat had a feel of "ballet girls are better than variety-show dancers" to it, and the whole point of Steadfast was to feature those same slightly lower class of dancers and personages as the protagonists and important figures in that same world. 

 

There were minor differences of course - Nina/Ninette the ballerina couldn't choreograph, while Katie is a brilliant dance designer.  The gathered "powerful menfolk" are Masters in the first and Magicians in the second.  The foe was an Earth Elemental in Nina's case, and Katie's abusive husband in the second. Although I do pause for a moment that in the comparison, it's sort of rough for Katie's poor hubby that an Earth Elemental comes off as so much more crafty and witty and clever than that poor sot. 

 

What's interesting is that reading them so close together, I can't really decide that one is better than the other, just that they are so very close to each other in style and tone and plot.  Really, the major difference I see is that Ninette gets to save herself in the end (although she hides that knowledge) and Katie gets saved in the end by a magical dragon who thinks she's sweet.  As a woman, I have to say I like the first option better.  However, the entire plotline (in both cases) is a woman alone and dependent on the whims (thankfully of the most noble and kindhearted sort) of the current batch of men who are angling to save her because it helps them out.  Not much in the way of agency when you're relegated to taking orders, after all.  

 

On a final note, re-reading Reserved for the Cat did make me question one thing: why didn't the Cat ever reveal himself to Ninette?     

Weather Witch, Shannon Delaney

Weather Witch, Shannon Delaney.  ISBN: 9781250018519

August 2, 2013

YA Alt-American Gaslamp Fantasy.

 

Ohh boy.  Fair warning - this one did not go so well with me.  I sulked for about an hour after reading it, and was petulant and unhappy to my poor husband all night.  Really unfortunate combination of potential in the premise with (in my opinion) an absolutely dismal execution.

 

I had written up a review that was exceedingly ranty, and felt bad about it, so I refrained from publishing it.

 

After about a week's consideration, I'm going to not post what I originally wrote up, and simply give a short explanation of why I don't consider this in any way a good read.

 

The main issue is the worldbuilding.  It was abysmal.   The setting was poorly defined, poorly set up, and did not make internal sense.  Even the character names didn't fit the place and time.  Nowhere did I get any feeling that this universe was real or able to be self-supporting.  It was horrible, and very frustrating.

In addition, the plot was the usual "oh, I got a contract from the publisher to do a series!" which translates to "this entire book is going to be an elaborate (but still badly done) set-up for the next book, and no actual feelings of accomplishment will occur."  Also very frustrating.

 

Lastly, the characters were obvious and paper thin.  Villains were totally transparent from the outset (to the degree that I wondered about the intelligence of the respective hero and heroine) and the main characters were little better.  Relationships were unrealistic and idealized, and several characters are brought into focus and then dropped entirely with absolutely no resolution to their plotlines.  Repeat it with me: very frustrating.

Now, what's sad, this review is practically charitable compared to what I ranted after having just read the thing.  

Dragon Run, Patrick Matthews

Dragon Run
Author: Patrick Matthews
Pubdata: Scholastic Press, March 1, 2013
ISBN: 9780545450683
Juv Fantasy:  Medieval western fantasy world where multiple sentient races (human, earthfolk, "windwalkers," merpeople) believe they were created by dragons as servants.  At age 12, the population are divided into 7 classes which indicate their ability to be of use - from the low caste 1 (considered untouchable) to the rare 7 who is fated to work directly for the dragon gods.  Our protagonist is about to discover that 1 isn't the lowest caste. 

I have a hard time with juvenile fantasy.  So often I get bummed out about the lack of depth in the worldbuilding, which detracts from an otherwise nifty plotline.  I did feel the lack of depth here also, but the story was quick and interesting enough that it was more of an after-the-read pensiveness, rather than a during-the-read confusion or disinterest.

First things first:  We have lovely "fantasy" names throughout.  Nice inventive names like Bird and Wisp and Trillia and Lord Archovar... and our hero?  His name is Al.  Not short for anything, no frills - just Al.  Dragged me right out of the story every single time it came up.  (What really got my goat is that at one point he needs an alias, and came out with Ul.  While still abrupt, at least that's interesting.  Nope - dropped like a rock after a page.) 

I can't tell if the author left gaps to provide openings for future installments, or if they are just left hanging.  They're nice minor things that can be left unsolved without driving readers crazy, but do offer interesting tangents into further stories if they're picked up.  That's a hard skill to master (judging by all the failures out there) and so I have to give credit there.

I am a little perplexed by the unevenness of the worldbuilding explanations.  There's a whole sunken district near our hero's childhood home that is shrouded in mystery - to the characters and to the reader.  A fantastical magical college town exists to be a plot device.  Likewise the plot McGuffin is totally unexplained (to character or readers) as to provenance or methodology, yet it's still used effectively despite no instruction on usage.

I liked Bird, and his people seem very interesting.  I would have liked him more if there were any sort of character growth in his storyline.  The sidekicks (and the bartender) were very nicely realized, and had their own problems with family and friends and adventuring which I appreciated. 

The interactions with the Magister were a little too easily laid out and solved, despite every indication that lingering suspicion should be an issue.  Again, I'm mostly blaming this on writing for the audience, but it could have been a little more fraught than it actually was.

Likewise the solution to the dragons.  That was... very easy.  Also seems like it should have been something that was guarded against a bit more effectively. 

Finally, the resolution is left ambiguous - what do the "ranks" mean now?  How is the political and economic (especially the magical economic) situation going to work out?  What about the other peoples?

Because this one is relatively new, and seems likely to be popular, I've done my best to avoid overt spoilage.  I may revisit to harp on specific plot/character details at a later date.
 

The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson

YA "Gearpunk" Fantasy
The Rithmatist
Brandon Sanderson
Tor Teen, May 14, 2013
ISBN: 9780765320322

I read this yesterday.  This is where the "rambling" comes in.

First off, some basics.  This book is YA - there are certain expectations persuant to the genre as to the levels of violence and the specific character archtypes and relationships.  I'm not going to bash on a book for adhering to an overall genre formula.  That would be like smacking A Song of Ice and Fire for being gory and political.  Missing the point.

However, (and I do think the YA genre enhanced this feeling quite a bit for me) there was a certain... workmanlike quality about this book.  Nothing so bad as to be clunky or plodding or badly plotted, just... well, go read Alloy of Law or Legion or The Emperor's Soul and then compare them to this.  It's servicable.  Not quite soul-satisfying.

Secondly, I LOVED the technical drawings, and I am very happy they were included.  They made the technical magical system information in the book much more understandable to a very non-spatial person.  They also provided more information to the close observer (much like Sanderson regularly does with his chapter headings..)  Also - unicorns and bears and spiders!  (Why does it always have to be spiders?)

The magic system itself reminded me strongly of FullMetal Alchemist.  If you think about it one way, yes, I admit, on the face of it, perhaps a bit silly to think of magic through chalk, and to have a whole population afraid of tiny little squiggly bits (most of which usually can't impact humans or non-chalk objects anyway).  However, there are a lot of people who are unsettled by little creepy unnatural oddly-moving things regardless of what they're made of, and furthermore it seems like laypeople in the story world can't tell any difference between chalklings that can eat people and those who can't.  Lastly, imagine our cultural heritage including fighting bloodthirsty chalk creatures that ate people's skins and eyes instead of Indians that scalped us, and - oh, just by the way, normal people can't do ANYTHING to avoid or fight off being overtaken, crawled all over, and then eaten away while living.  Less silly now.  Only oddity that I saw was that they hadn't developed the acid-bath version of the water gun, given their affinity for springs and pumps.


The characters were servicable.  Joel seemed a bit immature and clueless, but no more so than many teen boys I know.  Melody started very histrionic, but nearly immediately settled down, so I'm reading her introduction as how she over-dramatizes her boring life.  Fitch (sp?) was lovely.  I was happy to have a "wise older mentor" with an actual limitation that was limiting and important.  I would have liked to see either Joel or Melody realize that Fitch had difficulties with confrontation, and have to decide whether they thought he was cowardly or not (rather than having it spelled out for us by Fitch).  The school president (York?) was another strong male authority figure, and I'll just comment that if you ever put "n," "z," and a section that rhymes with "mal" into a character's name, they're going to be evil.  They just are.  It's one of the foundational rules of fantasy that you can't break.  LOVED that character/story arc, with the Harry Potter echoes.

The plot was well done.  I anticipated that Melody and Joel would end up where they did regarding the Melee.  I did NOT correctly guess the identity of the Scribbler.  (I did call the related twist.)  I was happy with the proportions of completed plot for this stand-alone book compared to all the different leads heading off for sequels/related works.  I thought the totally unnecessary addition of the Korean/Chinese/Mongolian takeover of Europe was brilliant and vastly amusing.  I want to eat spaghetti with chopsticks and water-chestnuts now (not so sure on the soy sauce).    

I (of course, as always) have many questions about the magic system, and how to work it/abuse it/work around it.  In a related curiousity, I'm puzzled about the incorporation of "gears" and scientific principles (and scientist-saints!) into Christianity, and really would like to hear some background on how those traditionally opposing forces joined to become a whole.  I am intrigued by the Tower of Nebrask, and in who/what is hidden there besides the chalklings.  I find it interesting that the Native population was nearly annihilated, but enough culture survived to give the islands their names.  I'm interested to know why springs and not steam.

      

Previously Published Review: StarCrossed, Elizabeth C. Bunce

Negatives first, then positives.

Target Reading Age: I kept having to check back on the spine to see that this book actually WAS classified as young adult. It reads much more to the middle-school range. Romances are vanishingly small, and hints about "adult" activities are vague. The heroine is 16, the 'semi-heroine' Merista is 13, and your 14th birthday marks the passage to adulthood - for girls only. While an interesting premise, it's one which seems pretty calculated to draw favor from the younger set, rather than their mature elders in high school.

A Little Extra Help Here: I normally don't think too much about extra-textual additions, but a story like this, with a new world, a convoluted magical (and lunar) system tied up into political intrigue, in addition to several far-spaced locations visited in the story itself, with more bandied about as important from the past? Really needs some liner notes. If I were publishing this, I would ask for the following:
A regional map.
An orbital map of the moons (with names).
A geneology/hierarchy of the gods/goddesses (strangely, I learned their associations pretty well from the text, but their relations and their "assigned astronomical body" remain largely mysteries).
A geneology of the current ruling family.

As a reader, I would have appreciated a pronunciation guide also - nothing here is particularly difficult to "invent" pronunciations, but I am always curious as to what the author intended or thought.

Next Time in StarCrossed: There was an extremely strong episodic feel for this story, to the point where I wondered if the chapters and sections had originally been written intentionally for different audiences. Each section has a different focus, feel, and pacing structure, and for someone who reads quickly (this one went down in about 6 hours one afternoon) those glaring shifts were quite strange. The problem here is that for someone who likes action, only the first and last episodes are going to thrill, while for someone who likes period drama (fancy dress balls and dinners) they may never get past the guttersnipe first portion to realize that the center of the book would be their cup of tea. Quite odd.

Contrivances Galore: Digger's family, "nobs" adopting a stray merchant child (in a very stratified society), the finding of the fugitive in the basement, the easy outwitting of the Inquisitors (who, presumably, after more than 14 years, have figured out how to do their jobs a wee bit better than that), and the sudden upswing in purple flaunting around (who, in this society, is brave enough to make and market purple cloth?) each, alone, isn't too much to handle. Taken all together, they act as a bit of an anchor to the buoyant narrative, holding it back from what could be truly excellent storytelling.

Casting Call for Boys: Men, we have in plenty. However, after the first section, there are exactly two boys, one of which is attached already. Far be it from me to suggest that the women aren't capable of holding down the fort (because I'm pretty sure they are) but even if they're not the main character, just HAVING some around makes reading more fun. Especially cruel is the introduction of the two noble boys at the beginning.

Now that I've smashed it all to bits, here's the good stuff! (Which did, incidentally, outweigh the negatives for me.)

Love a good story set in a differently-organized world. The multiple moons, the use of 'lunarists' instead of astrologists, the different personalities and purpose of each deity - lovely. The magic system doesn't seem as inventive to me as to some other reviewers, but it is well-established and appears to be a perfectly workable system.

Characterization was delightful. Digger/Celyn creates an almost Smeagol/Gollum personality split. Between wanting to be liked and to like and trust the people she's with, and her nearly pathological need to steal and sneak around, she is always interesting. A great viewpoint character. The noble/mercantile ladies and gentlemen are all individualized and personable, the courtesan is a tragic figure, and the two other "young" ladies start off interesting and show growth of character through the narrative. Even the villains have larger-than-life personalities.

While I griped about the abrupt changes in tone and focus above, I do have to say that (perhaps with a lighter touch) I did enjoy the different "stories" in all their vastly different ways. The novel ended up being almost like a collection of shorts, each a different genre - the street-rat, the comedy of manners, the spy story, the political intrigue, the ghost-story, the best-friend mystery - and what was most interesting: all of them were written well!

Language and spelling were tip-top (thank your editor today) with no distractions from the story. The mannerisms were decently fitted to the social-political scheme (with exceptions noted above) and the time-period itself was used to good effect to fit thematic and plot advancements into the narrative.

Overall, quite fun. Very much looking forward to the next installment.