Ariadne

Jennifer Saint
Completed 1/13/2026, Reviewed 1/16/2026
2 stars

I did not enjoy reading this book.  It suffered from the same issues as Heavenly Tyrant.  We spend way too much time in the main character’s head.  The book is almost all prosy descriptions of the internal struggle Ariadne experiences throughout her life.  And she repeats the same things over and over again.  Theseus is a savior, Theseus is a jerk, Dionysus is a savior, Dionysus is a jerk, my sister is self-absorbed, the Minotaur suffers, I suffer.  Over and over again.  This book is touted as a feminist retelling of the half-sister of the Minotaur and her relationship with Theseus and Dionysus.  To me there wasn’t much feminism.  I felt like she never had a self-actualizing moment and she always needed to have a man save her. 

Ariadne is the daughter of Minos.  Her beloved mother goes catatonic after giving birth to the Minotaur whom Minos eventually stashes away in a labyrinth, feeding him evil folks and Athenians.  Ariadne takes pity on the Minotaur, both having the same mother, but is still afraid of him.  She has a sister Phaedra who is boisterous and more outwardly self-centered.  The two are very close nonetheless.  When Theseus arrives as a sacrifice to the Minotaur, Ariadne plots with him to kill it and escape her raging abusive father.  However, Theseus abandons her on a deserted island and tricks Phaedra into marrying him, eventually becoming the King and Queen of Athens.  Dionysus saves her from death and they fall in love.  Phaedra falls in love with Theseus’ son from his rape of the leader of the Amazons.  And everyone wants revenge against everyone.  A very Greek tragedy.  

I wanted to stick pins in my eyes during the first hundred or so pages of this book.  Despite my love of Greek mythology, I found the events leading up to Theseus’ arrival mind numbing.  It is almost all told from Ariadne’s POV.  There are chapters from Phaedra’s POV as well, but they mostly come later.  We spend all that time in Ariadne’s head as she ruminates on the same things over and over.  The book got more interesting when narrated by Phaedra.  She’s much more action oriented and has much more stoic and go-getter personality.  Things happen in Phaedra’s chapters.  The action in Ariadne’s chapters are lost in the mental anguish and reflection prose.  I never felt connected to either one and had no empathy for their situations.  Yes, it was all terrible and mostly abusive or manipulative, but I felt like a third party watching from afar, not wanting to get close to this shit show.

Greek mythology is full of huge egos, manipulations, sexual violence and abuse, and misogyny.  But I felt it was done much better by Madelaine Miller in Circe.  Yes, you’re in the head of an abused and maligned woman, but you want to be there.  I so didn’t want to be in Ariadne’s head.  After reading about two-thirds of the book, I jumped onto Wikipedia to read up on the actual story to see how close it was following the original myth.  Of course, being mostly passed down orally, there are multiple versions.  But I got the gist of it.  This book does follow the myth, though I think the author could have done so much more with it.  Instead, it felt like a dry novelization.  

I give this book two stars out of five.  I was going to go a little higher, but after reflecting on it, I remembered how terribly bored I was by the prose.  Saint has written several books that retell Greek myth but I have no interest in following up on that.  Madeline Miller is much better at the retelling/reinterpretation game.  

My Roommate From Hell

Cale Dietrich
Completed 1/9/2026, Reviewed 1/12/2026
4 stars

This was a very cute, sweet, YA fantasy about first love as a freshman in college.  The twist is that the main character’s roommate is the Prince of Darkness.  Actually, he’s a prince from a parallel dimension where the inhabitants look like what we consider classic demons.  The sense is that visitors from this dimension over thousands of years have contributed to the collective idea of Hell and demons.  In this story, the roommate is part of an exchange program between the two dimensions to alleviate the misconception.  It’s complicated when the main character and the prince find themselves falling in love.  I didn’t see in my research if the author was influenced by Clarke’s “Childhood’s End,” but if he was, he took it in fun, eldritch directions.

When his mom drops Owen off at Pointe University, they are stunned to find out that his original roommate withdrew and Owen is now paired with Prince Zarmenus of Tartarus Beta, the parallel dimension, but commonly referred to as Hell.  Its inhabitants look like demons, although they can shape shift, and the dimension is full of fire, brimstone, rivers of lava, and eldritch horrors, just like the mythology of Christian Hell.  The university’s dean stresses the need for Owen and Zarmenus to get along to help with Earth/Hell relations.  She tells Owen that if he lasts out the semester exchange without incident, she will get him an internship at Google.  That highly motivates Owen and he agrees, only to find out that Zar is a spoiled, inconsiderate, and basically oblivious roommate.  Zar is also an extremely hot hunk.  Owen, on the other hand, is an intense, obsessive perfectionist who has never been on a date.  Navigating the situation is tough for Owen, made tougher by Zar’s suggestion that they pretend to be boyfriends to allay Zar’s royal, overbearing parents’ fears of failure in this exchange, as well as to convince the dean and the general populace that humans and demons can have a healthy relationship.  This forces Owen to question all his perfectionistic behavior and confront his fear of intimacy.  Hijinx ensue.

Yes, this is kind of a silly urban fantasy, but it deals with serious social awkwardness.  Owen has been focused on schoolwork his whole life, trying to do better than his parents and help them out financially.   Everything else is an irrelevant distraction.  His best friend Ashley is a classmate who was supposed to go to Pointe U with him but got pregnant and withdrew.  So now he’s alone and struggling to make friends.  Zar is a party boy.  He plays video games, never cleans his side of the room, and brings guys back to the room after dates while assuming Owen is asleep.  Without Ashley, Owen is lost.  Eventually, he does make some acquaintances.  Between them and through texts and calls with Ashley, he does finally confront Zar about his behavior.  The book is written in first person from Owen’s perspective.  So, we experience his struggle with conflict resolution, friend-making, and being in touch with his feelings.  And things become more complicated as he tries to deny his attraction to Zar and face his fear of pursuing what he wants.  

Then there are protests by fundamentalist extremist groups who can’t accept that the “demons” are simply beings from another dimension.  As usual, they fear what they don’t understand.  Additionally, they are followed around by the paparazzi who want photos and stories about this momentous college exchange program.  It’s bad enough that Owen is already an introvert, but this makes things even more uncomfortable.  Over time, though, he starts to enjoy his time with Zar despite the external pressures.  And of course, he has to face the fact that he is falling for Zar.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s very angsty, Owen being a college freshman.  We spend a lot of time in his head full of cognitive dissonance, but it’s done well.  There is also dialogue, action, and plot.  The world building is decent, and the prose is not overly flowery.  If you’re over teen angst novels, this isn’t for you.  But if you like a sweet, college-aged romance between an spoiled prince and an introverted nerd, this will prove very satisfying.  There are no spicy scenes; it’s not that kind of book.  It’s an honest take on being a young adult in extraordinary circumstances.  

Penric and the Shaman

Lois McMaster Bujold
Completed 1/7/2026, Reviewed 1/8/2026
3 stars

This second book in the Penric and Desdemona series picks up four years after the events of Penric’s Demon.  I was rather disappointed.  I was looking forward to more interplay between Pen and Des as he learns to harness his sorcerer’s skills at the Academy as well as the evolution of communication between them.  I still liked the book but wasn’t ready for the jump in years.  

The book begins with Penric, now assigned to the Princess-Archdivine near the end of his training.  An investigator, aka a Locator, asks for the ear of the Princess.  He’s come for aid in finding a runaway shaman who has killed his best friend.  She assigns Penric and a few soldiers to Oswyl.  He questions Penric’s age and experience but acquiesces to the Princess’ wishes.  Together the posse discovers the spirits of people whose souls did not ascend to one of the five gods and the relationship between the shaman and ghosts.  Eventually, they find Inglis the shaman, but the truth about the circumstances of the death isn’t what they expected.  

The strange thing about this book is that the narrative jumps between Inglis, Penric, and Oswyl.  Each one is told in third person, so it is sometimes disruptive between sections.  This is different from the first book where it was all told in third person Penric.  I found the different narratives to be too similar to each other and was often confused about who we were following.  Within each narration, though, Bujold kept the mind frame of the character consistent.  For example, when Inglis and Penric finally meet, it is from Inglis’ POV and at first, like Inglis, we’re not sure who has entered the room until Penric introduces himself.  So small details like that were done well.  I just would have been appreciative if Bujold maybe titled the chapters with the name of the person whose POV was being told.  

Referring back again to the jump in years between stories, I was a little jolted by Penric’s gentle, generous, and controlled manner.  He’s clearly come to grips with being the vessel for a demon.  When he speaks, he sounds like a kind therapist.  Unfortunately, the banter with Des is mostly gone, so there’s very little sarcasm or inside jokes.  He occasionally addresses Des for guidance, but for the most part, Des is not a real player in this story.  

On the positive side, the story is good.  The plot is more structured with interesting things happening throughout the book.  The reader understands the journeys of the characters.  The world building is still terrific as we delve into the mechanics of shamanism in this universe.  As usual, the prose is terrific.  Keep an eye out for the amazing mega-dogs.  They’re pretty awesome.

I give this book three stars out of five.  Despite liking the story, I once again did not find it quite as engrossing as I wish it was.  I believe this series pre-dates cozy fantasy, but it does have that feel.  With the ghostly apparitions and the bloody knife (no spoilers 😊 ) however, it felt colder than most books I’ve read in the cozy subgenres.  Something still draws me to reading more of the series, so my little book club with JB will read the next two installments for the March selection.  

Penric’s Demon

Lois McMaster Bujold
Completed 1/5/2026, Reviewed 1/5/2026
3 stars

I liked this first in a long series of novellas by the author of the Vorkosigan series and the World of the Five Gods: Chalion series.  This series takes place in the latter’s universe.  Everything about it reminds me about Bujold’s prior prose and universe building.  It’s well-written and extremely detailed.  However, in this first volume, I felt that it was almost all world-building and very little plot.  While that was great for character development of Penric and his demon Desdemona, it lacked the punch to keep me engrossed. 

Penric is a nineteen-year-old who is on a journey to meet the young woman he’s betrothed to.  Along the way, he stops at what looks like a carriage accident.  Instead, he finds an older woman barely hanging on to life lying alongside the road with her entourage unsure of what to do.  He approaches her, hoping to offer help.  As she dies, a demon transfers itself from her to Penric.  Knocked out, he’s rushed to the next town only to find that the demon is from the 5th god, the Bastard, who is known mostly for disruption and chaos.  While recuperating and as the demon herself recuperates from the transfer, they start to learn about each other and the powers that Penric will obtain from her.  This leads to a plot by several people who believe that they are better qualified to be the vessel of the demon than Penric and the only way to transfer the demon again is to kill him.  

My biggest issue as I mentioned above is that most of the book is about Penric waiting around for some sort of instructions for getting the demon out or learning to live with it.  He’s barred from looking at the books he needs, particularly the ones written by the dead woman who it turned out was a sorceress herself.  They contain many things she learned over her life housing the demon within her.  However, he establishes a rather naïve rapport with the demon, calling it Desdemona after finding out she is actually comprised of about twelve demons.  Des is touched by Penric and becomes protective of him in return for his care for her/them.  It all sounds interesting in a few lines, but spread over many pages, it felt very slow paced.  

After a while, you feel like something has to happen before the end, and it does.  It’s somewhat exciting, but felt like an obligatory add-on to keep the reader engaged.  Despite feeling meh about Bujold’s decision to make this simply a discovery story, I kinda liked it.  I’ve very interested in the rest of the series.  I’m reading the first two in the series for a third book club I belong to.  It’s just me and a good friend reading SF and Fantasy series that may or may not have been started in on-line book club.  So I’ll probably get to the next couple of volumes in the near future.  I’m glad I am, because Penric is actually the first male main character I’ve liked by Bujold.  I did think he sounded younger than nineteen in his naïveté, but overall, he seems like a good kid.  I give this book three stars out of five.

The Nature of Middle-Earth

JRR Tolkien, ed. By Carl F Hostetter
Completed 1/3/2026, Reviewed 1/3/2026
3 stars

This was an interesting collection of Middle-Earth facts and figures that Tolkien worked out from about 1959 to 1969.  He continued to write many notes and essays to clarify and make sense of disparities amongst all his works.  This book was divided into three sections: Time and Aging; Body, Mind, and Spirit; and The World, Its Lands, and Its Inhabitants.  Sometimes, the editor presented whole pieces and the iterations it went through.  Sometimes, it was fragments that Christopher Tolkien did not include in his twelve volume History of Middle-Earth series.  By arranging them all in the above three categories, the information made a little more sense, although the amount of detail often got overwhelming.

The first section, Time and Aging, was the toughest to get through.  Time moved differently for the Elves than Humans.  And time moved differently for the Elves depending on when they were in Middle-Earth versus when they were in Valinor.  Elves lived to be about 200 years old in Elvish time.  However, one Elvish year was about 144 sun years.  Tolkien spent an inordinate amount of time calculating the generations of Elves from their awakening through each of the ages based on their average ages of maturity and reproduction.  It was very complicated and by the end of the section, rather tedious.  

The Body, Mind, Spirit section was a little more interesting.  It covered things like puberty, sexual maturity, beards, language, and descriptions of the characters.  (As one reviewer I read said, despite Tolkien writing that Gandalf was 5’6” and anyone descended from the Numenorean kings were half-Elven and therefore beardless, I will always think of Gandalf as tall and Aragorn and Boromir as bearded.  Even before Peter Jackson, the Brothers Hildebrandt painted them this way.)  After the physical descriptions, Tolkien delves deeply into the Elven mind and spirit, focusing on the connections between them.  As the Elven body aged ever so slowly, their mind and spirit grew in knowledge and wisdom.  They did not fall to senility and body degradation as humans did.  They chose when to pass on before their body reached the point where their minds would begin to fail.  There’s a lot of philosophizing in this section concerning non-verbal communication, fate, free will, reincarnation and death.  Not all of it is exactly lined out and of course there are several versions of most of the texts, so Tolkien postulates many ideas.  It also becomes tough to follow after a while.

By the time I got to the last section, I was getting tired.  Many divergent topics are covered, like the making of lembas, the nature of the Elvish economy, the Elvish relationships with horses, details on the Numenoreans, and the nature of Dwarvish voices.  Some of it’s interesting, but it all felt tedious.  Having read the complete History of Middle-Earth, this felt extraneous.  I was finishing it just to finish it, rather than to enjoy it.  For some reason, I was expecting to be wowed a little more than I was.  This book felt like more of an afterthought to Christopher Tolkien’s work rather than new revelations.  Still, it was good to have it all organized like this.  That, at least, was coherent.  So, I give this book three stars out of five.  

I’m going to paraphrase another reviewer, because it made me laugh: Me after reading all 12 "History of Middle-earth" books and "The Nature of Middle-earth": I pass the test. I will diminish and go into the West and remain Stephen.

The Hyperspace Enigma Part 2: Fantastic Voyage

Adam Andrews Johnson
Completed 12/26/2025, Reviewed 12/26/2025
4 stars

This book was not quite the hoot that the first one was.  Destination Unknown introduced a lot of silly ship names and scenarios that caused chuckles throughout the book.  This one was a little more serious.  There’s more action and more dire situations.  They are separated by jokes and witty dialogue, but the overall plot takes this book to darker places.   

The first book ended with a huge cliffhanger, so be prepared for SPOILERS for it.  

Our eclectic group of space travelers have been separated.  The sweet android Phentrom who has acquired the ability to love is captured by a bounty hunter while in Bouilla Bay with hunky Captain Suoki and his little pug Frou-Frou, Fonith, and Golvinte.  It’s up to Suoki, Fonith, and Golvinte to track down Phentrom and his abductor.  Stawren and Lyoth are out trying to find Suoki’s ship which was stolen by mutineers and flown through a wormhole which took it outside the known universe.  They rely on research by Stawren’s amazing Aunt Thia who can hack just about anywhere to get information.  She finds the anomalous nebula at the edge of the universe and sends the two there.  They find a hidden planet with an amazing power source and a society of brilliant scientists who send them on a quest to find ingredients for a compound that may be able to help them find the ship.  The list includes one hundred liters of godstrolls blood.  This, and the other ingredients send Stawren and Lyoth all over, meeting strange and dangerous societies, not to mention the whole act of obtaining the blood from these gigantic people eaters.  Action and excitement ensue as the two groups try to pursue their missions and survive the strangeness that they meet along the way.

Unlike the first book, things get dicey right from the beginning.  There are moments of levity here and there, but overall, the seriousness is in the forefront.  One wonderful lighter scene is when there’s a celebration on Boullia Bay at Stawren’s father’s bar and restaurant.  The evening begins with drag queen story time for the children.  After the children are taken to a separate hall to play until they fall asleep, the adults watch the full drag show with a sumptuous buffet.  It’s one of the few times everyone is happy and safe.  

As I was reading this book, I realized the main characters are all Mary Sue’s.  As I described in the last review, they all seem a little too unbelievably perfect.  Lyoth has amazing skill from his past as a career righter of wrongs.  Stawren is an awesome pilot.  Aunt Thia is the hacker from hell.  It’s rather funny when you think about it.  But with the crazy situations that Johnson puts these characters in, they better be unbelievable to get out of them.  So yeah, they’re still rather two-dimensional, but I’ve come to really like them.  And minor spoiler, not everyone gets out of every situation this time.  So the darkness of the plot affects the characters as well.  

I also really liked that the group’s morality comes into question.  They work hard at not killing their enemies willy-nilly, but tough situations call for tough decisions.  They regret what they have to do to save each other and they openly discuss it.  It calls into question the whole Star Wars-y shoot ‘em up space cowboy mythos that began in the first book.  It brings the characters a little closer to being three-dimensional.  One really touching scene has Lyoth trying to deprogram a nineteen-year-old girl who’s just been freed from a dangerous cult.  

I still find the writing to be a little rough.  There’s a lot of telling rather than showing.  Some of the dialogue is a little too plain, with the obvious being stated too often.  And there are an awful lot of really nice, helpful people around the universe.  It’s too good to be true.  But somehow, it all works, and I can’t wait for the next book to be released.  So yes, there’s another cliffhanger, which bummed me out.  But you can be sure that I’ll still keep reading the series.  It is great to have likable characters who keep saving the day in a homo-normative universe.  And Johnson does his damnedest to explain the crazy science in this wild universe he’s created.  I give this book four stars out of five.  

The Hunter’s Apprentice

Lindsay Schopfer
Completed 12/20/2025, Reviewed 12/25/2025
5 stars

This is the (currently) the last book in The Beast Hunter series and it is everything that’s great about this series.  It’s full of creative character development, detailed world building, and is beautifully written.  Reading these books gives me a warm, cozy feeling, even with all the Cthutu-like monsters roaming around.  This time though, instead of being contracted to kill monsters, Keltin and his posse travel the infamous Salt Road to take Jaylocke to see his nomadic people, the Weycliff wayfarers.  Along the way, they have to deal with several monsters, including a flying beast that tries to abscond with a wayfarer child right from the middle of camp.  But also in this book, Keltin shows us his conscientious side, his respect for monsters when they aren’t an active threat to people.  

Keltin’s apprentice Jaylocke receives a letter that the wayfarers are holding a Gathering where events such as infant naming, marriages, and provings take place before the council of elders.  Jaylocke must attend to prove himself a master of his field to be deemed an adult.  It is only as an adult that he can marry the woman he pines for, who already is an adult.  However, he has a rival for her affection who will go through his own proving.  Keltin and Bor’ve’tai accompany him to vouch for his learning, along with the women these two pine for.  Yes, there’s a lot of pining going on.  On the way, they meet up with some big game hunters who want to hire Keltin to help them track and kill some monsters for sport.   Through this and later interactions with the hunters, we learn that Keltin not only has a healthy respect for the monsters, but also refuses to indiscriminately kill them if they are not a clear and present danger to people.  

A lot goes on in this book.  Through Jaylocke’s proving ritual, we learn a lot about his nomadic peoples.  They are somewhat like Native Americans in their roaming, rituals, and decision making.  As for his rival, he’s a quiet nervous young man who unfortunately has three obnoxious and belligerent older brothers.  They show no respect for either Jaylocke or his mentor Keltin and try to ambush both their characters by taking Keltin out on a monster hunt for food.  The brothers get drunk and shoot for sport rather than food, leaving seventeen monsters dead or dying from careless shooting.  Keltin, who shows them the correct way to mercifully kill a monster, is disgusted.  He takes their wagon back to camp, leaving them to return by foot.  The brothers claim Keltin tried to leave them for dead, but not until after the hunter has demonstrated to the elders the brothers’ recklessness.  Then, when Jaylocke doesn’t pass his proving, he finds the big game hunters to lead them on safari to take down an alpha male monster, proving he has what it takes.  This leads to a confrontation between Keltin and two rival alphas.  

Romantic love is also a theme throughout this book.  There’s the thread of Jaylocke wanting to be able to choose the woman with whom he is infatuated.  The woman of Keltin’s longing is also on the trip.  But he is too awkwardly shy to honestly express himself.  And, he just doesn’t get her hints.  There is even sexual tension between Bor’ve’tai and his own love interest, although it’s hard to pick up on them because the Loopi are such a calm, stoic people.  

Another major focus of the book is the society of one type of herding monster.  They are bison-like with many horns used by the males for defense and proving dominance.  One particular herd feeds near the Gathering.  The alpha male is known as the Emperor.  There is a rival male roaming the plains near the Gathering as well which wreaks havoc on one of the wayfarers’ tribes on their way to the event.  Needless to say, we have a lot of interactions with the two males before their final showdown for dominance over the herd which we get to experience with Keltin, Jaylocke, Bor’ve’tai, and the big game hunters.

One last point to make is that despite this being Old West flavored, the featured female characters are not simply damsels in distress.  They all have their gifts and strengths.  Elaine, who loves Keltin, is quite strong and fierce under her outward demure appearance.  The same goes for Bor’ve’tai’s love, though we know that from the previous books as well.  And the women of the wayfarer tribes, like a Native American tribe, also are strong women who play active and prominent roles in leadership, defense, and healing, to say the least.  While the series is very male-dominated character-wise, the female characters are by no means dismissed as subservient and powerless.    

I give this book five stars out of five.  It pressed all my good buttons for emotional involvement in the story and the characters.  I was sad this was the last of the books, for now.  I’m on Schopfer’s mailing list, so I’ll be alerted if (when?) another installment comes out.  In the meantime, I still have a huge TBR list to distract me, although I’ll probably find time to read some of his other books 😉