Iron Flame

Rebecca Yarros
Completed 12/28/2024 Reviewed 12/28/24
4 Stars

This book is much of the same as the first book, Fourth Wing.  It’s well-written, fast-paced, action-packed, and a fast read despite being almost 900 pages long.  It did take me almost two weeks to get through it, but I enjoyed almost every minute of it.  This book is in two parts and could easily have been two books.  It will be interesting to see how long the third book, which comes out next month, will be.  The only thing that knocks it down a little for me in my rating is that it is not as much of a surprise as the first book. I’m not going to make it a habit of reading “Romantasy” very often, well, straight romantasy anyway.  I do have a nice collection of LGBTQ+ romantasy I’ve accumulated which I hope to get through this next year.  In the meantime, I will probably read the rest of this series, which is supposed to be four books, as it comes out over the next two years.

This book begins right on the heels of the last book.  Violet Sorrengail has found out about the new generation trying to rebel against the powers that be at the military school.  The leaders of the school have been lying about many things, to the students, and to the people in the part of the continent they control.  Violet is now a second-year student who has bonded with the most powerful dragon in the Empyrean, and also with a second dragon who is barely an adolescent.  She is also still madly in love with Xaden.  He is stationed outside the school, but since their dragons are mated, they get to travel back and forth so their dragons can mate and they can see each other as well.  However, Violet is under attack again, this time from the leadership of the school, trying to find out what really happened on the ill-fated mission that ended the last book.  

Like the first book, this is a very dark story.  There are deaths in battle and torture by military leaders.  There are some lighter moments but not many.  Even when it seems things have smoothed out for Violet, she meets another big problem, like the woman who was betrothed to Xaden to seal a political deal made by their parents.  This gets Violet and the woman into an extended “fight over a man” which is kind of trite, but I thought it was executed well nonetheless.  The more intriguing plotline was the attempt to find how to create a ward over a part of the continent that is under attack, but not protected by the ward over the school and its environs.  The magic to create it is hidden deep in the history of the school and unification of the kingdoms.  And I always have a thing for libraries and ancient texts.  

Violet is still an interesting character.  She’s torn by loyalties, family, and love.  And she’s still young, only twenty-one, I believe.  But she develops over the course of the book by these conflicts.  Reflecting on the book, I do believe it passes the Bechdel Test.  Two female characters have conversations and it’s not about a man.  The women all get good roles that aren’t about relationships, except for the previously mentioned “girl-fight.”  And it seems kind of ironic considering this is a romantic novel with three major sex scenes.  But that’s not bad, averaging about one every three hundred pages LOL.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  I’m continually surprised by the fact that I’m enjoying it so much.  Everything about it is pretty good, but the overall effect is tremendous.  And the end is a terrific cliffhanger.  I’m going to wait a while before reading the next book.  It’s the beginning of a new year with new challenges on Worlds Without End.  I probably won’t participate in as many, as I want to read a lot of books not in WWE’s database.  But to end this year, I definitely was glad to finish on a high note.  

Brasyl

Ian McDonald
Completed 12/14/2024, Reviewed 12/14/2024
2 stars

I have a mixed history with Ian McDonald.  I really liked his Luna: New Moon novella, but did not like another novella, Time Was.  This time, I did not like the book.  I felt it was overly complex and boring with way too many characters across three different timelines.  I felt it was a mess.  However, there are a lot of people who really like this book.  It won the 2007 British SF Award and was nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, and a host of other awards. I will say that the book has good prose and seems well researched, but the convoluted plots never grabbed me.

There are three story-/timelines.  The first is the book’s present, 2006 Brazil.  Marcelina is a reality show creator on a channel that produces the bottom of the barrel exploitive trash TV.  She’s trying to come up with the next big thing.  Her current idea is to find the soccer player who lost the 1950 world cup for Brazil and confront him about it.  He’s of course been out of the limelight for over 50 years.  In the meantime, she sees a doppelganger who uses her identity.  

In 2032, Edson is a cross-dressing bisexual opportunist who does his best to hide from the surveillance drones all over the cities.  He finds his former girlfriend is alive again and she appears to be a quantum computer hacker now.

Lastly in the mid-18th century, an Irish Jesuit is sent to the Brazilian rain forest to find a renegade priest, a la Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now.  He himself goes renegade and creates his own City of God.  There appear to be angels in the forest who can shoot out fire.

In each of these storylines, there is something out of kilter in the world and the main characters are affected by it.  There being a quantum computer hacker, angels, and doppelgangers, it’s pretty evident there is something crossing universes.  The trouble is, will the characters, and the reader ever figure out what’s going on. I felt like this book was so convoluted and confusing that I didn’t care when it was all finally revealed. I was bored silly by the situations the characters were in.  Even when there was action, I didn’t care.  And there were so many other characters in each timeline, I couldn’t keep track of who was who.  As the plots became more complex, I became more lost.  

I give this book two stars out of five.  I found next to nothing about it compelling.  There were moments when the rain forest timeline reminded me of Apocalypse Now and The Mission.  That kept me going through parts of that story.  But each chapter was about 25 pages long.  So just when I felt like I was getting into it, it jumped to the next timeline.  By the time I got back to it fifty or so pages later, I didn’t remember enough of it to keep the story alive in my head.  Not my cup of tea.

Moon Called

Patricia Briggs
Completed 11/30/2024 Reviewed 11/30/24
3 Stars

This is the first book in the Mercy Thompson series.  Mercy is an auto mechanic in the Tri-Cities area of Washington.  She’s a rough and tumble woman.  She’s also a shapeshifter.  She can change her shape into a coyote.  She was raised by a werewolf clan, and not just any, but the clan whose alpha is the alpha of all North American clans.  She also knows a vampire and a gremlin.  This book is kind of standard fare supernatural mystery.  But it’s pretty fun.  There were times when the book dragged, but overall, it was a nice break from the some of the heavy works I’ve been reading.

Mercy has a good sense of smell.  One day, a young man named Mac approaches her for a job at her auto repair shop.  She can smell he’s a werewolf.  She’s also pretty sure he’s homeless and possibly in trouble.  She brings him the alpha of her area, Adam, who happens to be her neighbor.  It’s customary for new werewolves in an area to meet the alpha to become a member of the clan, or at least be acknowledged.  A day or two later, Mac’s body appears on her front stairs.  She runs to Adam’s place where she finds Adam near death, three or four dead werewolves, and Adam’s daughter Jesse missing.  Suddenly she’s on a desperate mission to save Adam and rescue Jesse.  Her journey has her cross paths with multiple werewolf clans, including the ones who raised her, the vampire mistress of the pacific northwest, and mysterious humans who use tranquilizer darts laced with silver.

I have to say, I liked all the characters.  Mercy is a good protagonist.  Briggs avoids the Mary Sue issues by making Mercy vulnerable and fallible.  Briggs does a good job of creating the rules for each supernatural being and sticking with them, including the rules for Mercy.  She has heightened sense of smell and can outrun a werewolf, but not outfight one.  I also liked her relationship with vampires.  She generally stays away from them, except for one with whom she trades the mob-like protection fee for free auto repair.  And I liked Zee, the gremlin from whom she bought the car shop.  As you would guess, gremlin’s like to see how mechanical things work by taking them apart, but not necessarily putting them back together.

The world building was good, as is evident by some of the supernatural rules and descriptions above.  There was a touch of romance in the story, but nothing obnoxious.  There was more about the claiming of mates and the submissive roles of females in the clan.  There was even one gay werewolf, which was done very well.  And all of this was explained quite well in the context of wolf-like behavior.  Fortunately, Mercy not being wolf-kind, gets to be more of a kick-ass and exert some influence over the werewolves.

I give this book three stars out of five.  I’ve heard that the later stories in the series are better.  This book spent a lot of time with character background and setting that kind of dragged.  And the politics within and without the clans was a little tedious.  Lastly, the ending was okay.  This was a book club read.  I probably won’t actively seek out more of her books, but I’d wouldn’t be against reading another one.