Redemptor

Jordan Ifueko
Completed 11/15/2024, Reviewed 11/15/2024
4 stars

The second book in the Raybearer duology was just as good as the first book, if not a little better.  The real standout was the world building, specifically, the really interesting and creative Underworld.  It made the ending very powerful.  I was further impressed when I read the Afterword from the author.  Raybearer took fifteen years to create.  Then having published the first book, she had to crank out the second book in less than a year.  And it was all done during the time of the pandemic and the biggest black movement in the US since the ‘60s.  Somehow, Ifueko produced a nearly flawless conclusion.  This book was nominated for several awards, including the Andre Norton Award for YA genre literature. 

The book picks up where the first left off.  Tari has claimed the title of Empress, which has been suppressed since the founding of the empire.  She has offered herself in lieu of children as a sacrifice to the Underworld to rescind the treaty with the demons of the Underworld.  She has two years to win over and anoint her chosen eleven as Daro did.  However, she is haunted by the souls of the hundreds of thousands of children who have been sacrificed over the centuries, demanding she pay for the sins of the empire.  And she must do all this without dying in the Underworld herself.

The journey for Tari is to learn to be an empress and balance it with doing the best possible things for her people.  Her goal is to provide peace, justice, and unity.  However, she is hampered by her quest to anoint her chosen eleven.  The stipulation put on it by the demons of the underworld is that the eleven must be the eleven rulers of the nations making up the empire.  So Tari has a long lesson in politics and how to use honesty in the best possible way to win over the rulers.  As you would guess, one of the eleven plays games with her, preventing her from completing the quest.  And this one is somewhere between debonair and smarmy.

The good thing about the Tari, though is that while she is occasionally distracted by men, she does not give herself over to them, holding her own moral ground, and working for what’s best for the empire.  That’s not to say she isn’t tempted.  She is, but continues to grow through each experience.  I think she makes for a terrific role model as a strong, black teen girl.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s a little stronger than the first book, getting to the point much more directly.  The climax is terrific.  The prose is good, the character development of Tari is excellent, and the world building, as I said above, is awesome. I still feel that this duology is more for older teens than young teens, but that’s just me.  I’ll probably read more of Ifueko in the future.

By the Sword

Mercedes Lackey
Completed 11/9/2024, Reviewed 11/9/2024
3 stars

I have a mixed history with Mercedes Lackey.  I really enjoyed the Magic’s Pawn trilogy from the massive Valdemar series.  I had mixed feelings about the Oathbound trilogy.  Overall, I like many aspects of Lackey’s books, but sometimes, they just don’t come together for me as a whole.  That happened with this book as well.  It’s a standalone in the Valdemar series, although it relies on information from the previous eight books in the series, six of which are the two trilogies I mentioned above.  So I had some background for this book.  However, it just felt rather dull.

The story begins as a sumptuous feast with Kerowyn, aka Kero, and her father, brother, and brother’s fiancé, as well as many others.  The feast is attacked by the forces of an evil mage, killing her father, wounding her brother, and kidnapping the fiancé.  Most of the men are slaughtered.  Kero picks up her sword and tries to find the fiancé.  She comes across her grandmother Kethry and her partner Tarma who give her the sword named Need, a magic sword that helps woman in danger.  Kero rescues the fiancé, but realizes she is meant to be a warrior, not simply a wife, and leaves her brother to study under Kethry and Tarma.  After a while she joins a mercenary company fighting as needed, culminating in major campaign to keep Valdemar from being invaded.

Like the previous six books of Lackey’s that I read, this one has amazing world building.  Even though it’s been two years since the last Oathbound series, her storytelling style had me right back in their world.  Reading a Lackey novel is sumptuous for its prose, creating vivid descriptions of the characters and the world they are living in.  

The characters are also very well drawn.  Not only do we get a great sense of who Kero is, but other characters as well.  Daren, the third son of a king with whom Kero trains, is a perfect spoiled royal who seems to grow up but still doesn’t understand how Kero wants to be a soldier but not someone’s wife, namely, his.  Fortunately, he grows up and returns later in the book as a much more mature prince.  I also liked Eldan, a Herald from Valdemar, from whom Kero learns about the peace-loving people, and with whom she falls in love.  The conflict between her love for him and desire to continue to be a mercenary is well played out.  

While this book has all these positive things going for it, I found reading it to be a chore.  I liked the beginning, but the subsequent parts felt directionless.  This book is kind of a third-person diary, describing the life of Kero.  There is no real overriding arc.  It’s like several different stories about her bound in one book.  And the stories take a long time to play out.  This e-copy of the book didn’t have page numbers, and I was constantly wondering if this book was really five hundred pages, or much longer.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  It was one of those situations where the sum of the parts did not equal the whole.  I guess I never really cared about Kero, even though she was a kick-ass soldier and leader, in whose head we spend a lot of time.  I still think Lackey is a terrific writer, with great prose, world building, and character development.  This book just didn’t do it for me.

Raybearer

Jordan Ifueko
Completed 10/30/2024, Reviewed 11/5/2024
4 stars

I was pleasantly surprised by this book.  It is listed as a YA novel, nominated for multiple awards including the Andre Norton award for YA Sci Fi and Fantasy.  It turned out to be one of those books that’s classified as YA because the protagonist is young.  I think the plot is pretty mature and seems to be written for teens at the youngest.  Well, that’s my opinion anyway.  But it takes a rather standard plot and turns it on its head a bit.  So even though it seemed like it was going in one direction, it went in several others.  I liked that.

Tarisai has been growing up with tutors and servants.  Her mother, known only as The Lady, visits every now and then.  Tarisai is lonely with an intense desire to belong.  At about age 9, she sort of gets her wish, and is sent to the capital to compete with others her age to be chosen as one of the eleven of the council of the heir to the throne.  Reluctant at first, she finds she bonds with many of the other children.  However, she has a gift that doesn’t allow her to touch other people, lest she share minds with them.  That gift however, just might elevate her above the other children to be one of the selected.  There is a catch though.  The Lady commanded Tarisai to kill the prince once she is selected and becomes close to him.  This leaves Tarisai with an existential dissonance:  remain a part of the next ruling body of the kingdom, or overthrow the monarchy to fulfill her mother’s revenge plot.

The thing I liked most about this book was that Tarisai did not fall in love with the prince whom she is obligated to assassinate.  She does become very close to him, along with two others selected for the council.  But Ifueko very nicely sidesteps the falling in love with the target trope.  Instead, the book focuses on Tarisai’s relationships with the prince, others on the council, her guardians, her vindictive mother, and her magical father.  At the same time, the plot moves fairly quickly and keeps the action going at a decent pace.  I liked the world building.  Like the plot, it’s recognizable, but with twists.  The twelve realms are like the various parts of our world, with a few extras added in, plus some things based on African folklore.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  I really liked it and empathized pretty well with the main character.  My biggest gripe was that it didn’t feel like a YA novel.  Yeah, I know that the classification is a publishing marketing thing, but I think it’s still misleading.  I thought this book was quite adult in its content.  I’m looking forward to the sequel of this duology.  Hopefully, I’ll be reading it in a few weeks.

An Orc on the Wild Side

Tom Holt
Completed 10/24/2024, Reviewed 10/24/2024
3 stars

This was a decent send up of fantasy, specifically poking fun at Tolkien.  It made me smile a lot, but was not the rip-roaring laugh fest I thought it would be.  However, the puns are great, the jabs at LOTR are amusing, the satire of the whole was well thought out.  It made fun of race, gender, retirement, gentrification, middle class, and corporate greed.  And it’s all played out in a basically plotless tale with elves, dwarves, wizards, goblins, wraiths, and humans.  I enjoyed the book and will read more by Holt in the future.  If you like authors like Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and Christopher Moore, you’ll enjoy this one too.

The first half of the book begins with lots of disparate threads that take a while to come together.  There’s the new Dark Lord who is trying to usher in a new Evil with better health care, fewer wars, and female goblins.  There’s the king of the Dwarves who has a human cook.  She’s secretly from another dimension here to try to pawn off cheap Chinese-made utensils and gadgets.  There’s the human lawyer just fired from his Elven law firm for not having enough billable hours.  He gets contacted by the great eye to buy up all the lands of the Realm and displace the inhabitants.  And of course, there are the people from England who have come through a portal to buy (cheap) property homesteading the Realm in the parallel dimension.

There’s a lot going on.  It is remarkable that there is no real plot, just lots of little scenarios.  I guess it all eventually comes together as everyone tries to figure out who the great eye is and why is he trying to take over the Realm.  And I must say, the author does a pretty good job of involving everyone.  There are a lot of threads and they all somehow come together in the end.  

The fun of the book is all the references to Tolkien works and general high fantasy novels.  Holt keeps the humor at a pretty good level through most of the book.  I smiled through almost the whole thing.  I do have to say that the ending caught me off guard.  The book was listed at 393 pages, but it ended at about 359.  (the rest being promos of other books).  So I was expecting a lot more elaborate of a conclusion.  It wasn’t bad, just abrupt.

The characters were at about the right level of development for the type of comedy that is this book.  Nothing too in depth, but enough that every character had a personality.  It wasn’t Monty Python caricatures, but lots of all round silliness mixed in with some bright moments.  I give the book three out of five stars because it’s good.  I’m just a little disappointed it wasn’t funnier.  Once again, this review is rather quick and short as I’ll be in a sling for my dominant shoulder for another 6 weeks.  

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Becky Chambers
Completed 10/21/2024, Reviewed 10/23/2024
4 stars

This is the second novella in the Monk and Robot series, which so far is the last.   Like the first, this book is like a big hug and a warm quilt.  Sibling Dex and Mosscap are back, still roaming the countryside, but this time, on their way to Dex’s home.  The book continues to ask the existential questions about life, want, need, humanity, etc, through dialogues between Dex and Mosscap.  There is a lot less tea serving as Dex questions his purpose in life.  But like Psalm for the Wild-Built, it is still a cozy book that is a joy to read.  

I’m keeping this review very short as the book is so similar to Psalm, and because typing is still slow after my shoulder surgery.  I give this book four stars out of five.  It is very close to a five star book for me, because of the way it left me feeling.  It would have been an interesting experience if this were a single volume.  It makes me wonder if I would have given it five stars if I could have sat with it longer.  Anyway, it’s a wonderful read, so warm, gentle, and comforting in the way it leaves me feeling.  I look forward to any other sequels Chambers produces.  

Sister Mine

Nalo Hopkinson
Completed 10/18/2024, Reviewed 10/18/2024
4 stars

My reviews are going to be a little shorter for a few installments.  I have had another surgery on my shoulder and typing is one handed and slow going.  I really enjoy Nalo Hopkinson’s books, even when they’re a little uneven.  This is one such book.  I really enjoyed it, but I felt there were a few two many plot threads and jumping between them was unnerving and sometimes hard to follow.  Hopkinson infuses modern stories with Caribbean mythology and magic.  This time, the main character was a recently separated conjoined twin whose sister received all the family mojo while she received none.  It made growing up in a family of demigods difficult to say the least.  This book won the 2014 Norton Award for YA Sci Fi and Fantasy.  

Makeda is the human twin, Abby is the twin with all the mojo.  The book begins with Makeda moving to a place of her own among the humans.  She’s decided she has to learn how to live without relying on her sister.  Amidst this process, their father dies.  He was condemned to a human existence for falling in love with a human and fathering the two girls.  However, he still is a demigod and should be okay once having shirked his human body.  However, his father was suffering from dementia and part of his existence is in the invasive kudzu plant which seems to want to destroy Makeda.  She is also being chased by a haint, aka haunt or evil spirit.  So Makeda still has to rely on Abby for help in all these things.  She also has a few other people helping her, including her new landlord who seems to have some mojo of his own, and a lover of Abby’s who is in reality a guitar once owned by Jimi Hendrix.  

As you can see by the plot summary, there are a lot of strange things going on.  And the story telling jumps around among all these things.  And for there being so much Caribbean mojo, it actually takes place in Canada.  I occasionally got lost when Makeda did a lot of running from her haint, the kudzu, and other negative energy and entities.  I thought the subplots ad world building all got a little confusing.

However, I thought the characters were really strong.  Makeda is a terrific main character just trying to find her own as an ordinary human.  However, she does seem to occasionally sense mojo around her in others.  She’s convinced she’s heard messages from sea shells and trees, although she gets no support from her family on this.  Abby is a lot harder to like since she is gifted sister.  I also liked Brie, Makeda’s new landlord, who’s also a musician for a band whose music has some mojo-like effect on its listeners.  

Despite having too many plot threads and confusing world building, I enjoyed reading the book.  I was pretty gripped in the search for Makeda’s father, and what form outside the kudzu he would take, if that was even a thing.  I thought the premise was well conceived.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I have another book by Hopkinson, a collection of stories, which I’m interested in.  I might be reading that in a month or so.  

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Becky Chambers
Completed 10/9/2024, Reviewed 10/9/2024
4 stars

This was a wonderful novella by the author of the Wayfarers series, the first of which is The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.  I loved that and the other three novels in that series.  I was a little hesitant about this one; I’m not sure why.  I think because I thought she couldn’t top the Wayfarers.  But she at least equaled it with this book.  It’s about life after the Factory Age, when the Robots became aware and left.  Humans recreated their industry without them, and focused on sustainable technology after returning from the brink of self-destruction.  The book is so heartwarming and life-affirming that I had a warm glow about me all the way to the end.  I’m hoping the second book in this series is equally wonderful.  The series was nominated for a 2024 Mythopoeic Award.

Dex is a monk.  They crave the sound of crickets, becoming obsessed with it.  They decide they need a change and become a Tea Monk, bringing hand-prepared teas specifically made for each customer.  They’re sort of a Tea therapist, traveling the land, setting up a booth, and preparing teas based on what each customer tells them is going on with them.  After two years as a Tea Monk, they get the itch again to hear crickets, becoming an obsession.  They decide to cancel their next city visit and go into the mountains in search of them.  On the way in, they come across a robot.  Robots haven’t been seen in about two hundred years.  Mosscap, the robot, tells Dex it is on a journey to meet and learn about humans, and what’s happened to them since they walked away, and what do they need.  Dex however wants to be alone on his own journey, begrudgingly taking Mosscap along.

There are really only two characters in this story, Dex and Mosscap.  Dex is searching for themselves and their purpose.  So when Mosscap appears and asks what does Dex need, they can’t answer because even they don’t know.  They don’t know why their on the journey, only that they’ve become obsessed with the crickets.  Dex is kind of an every person who just wants to find meaning in life.  Mosscap is kind of the opposite.  It is out exploring and researching, but doesn’t need meaning in life.  Life is its own meaning.  Needless to say, they get in some heated discussions.

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s like a warm hug, or should I say, a cup of tea designed especially for my needs.  While I’m not a tea drinker, I can relate to the feeling of having something so delicious, made for my palate, that I am sated with life.  That’s what this book was like for me.  It being a novella, I don’t want to go into more detail than I already have, hoping I haven’t given away any spoilers.  I just really look forward to the second novella.