Into the Void

Ronny Valtonen
Completed 4/11/2026, Reviewed 4/11/2026
2 stars

This was a tough book to review.  I know the author and this is his first work.  I like to give new, self-published authors the benefit of the doubt.  Unfortunately, this book is much like my own early attempts at writing, which I can look at with a more critical all these years later.  Valtonen chose a form that is difficult to be anything but exposition.  It’s the journal of the commanding officer of a mission to find a new habitable planet for humankind.  A lot happens on the trip, but there are no real details.  As one would expect in a journal, it’s just the highlights.  I never felt much empathy with the characters.  Instead, it just felt like a manifesto for an idealistic search for a new home rather than a work of fiction.

The crew consists of four members: Jonathan the commander, Jebidiah the security officer, Ellie the scientist, and Polly the photographer and documenter.  They are on a five-year mission to Proxima Centauri B, the most likely candidate for a new home.  On the planet they find ruins that contain a portal.  They opt to go through the portal and meet a race of beings that are far more advanced than humans.  They offer the crew the opportunity to travel farther in their search for the best planet to homestead.  This takes them up to a place known as the Void, where physics fails and new insights into the universe and its inhabitants are revealed.  

These journal entries were all about telling, not showing.  They were all recaps of what had happened aboard the ship.  There is almost no dialogue, no details of the characters’ interactions.  The entries are pretty strictly reports, not recounts.  It made for tiresome reading.  Jonathan praised the characters almost completely throughout.  There was almost no conflict.  The closest we get is that Jeb and Polly try to have a secret relationship which everyone figures out, and then Polly gets pregnant.  Even when the crew meets the extraterrestrials, everything goes super smoothly.  The crew does have differing opinions on things but always comes to a level-headed consensus.  

I also noticed issues a proofreader could have caught.  For example, some measurements are given in metric, others in imperial units.  I was also confused by the speed of light usage.  They were supposedly traveling at 5c, which would be five times the speed of light.  With Proxima Centauri B being about five light-years away, it should only have taken them about a year.  Valtonen throws in some calculations that are little suspect as well.  I didn’t do the math myself, but it seemed like there was some confusion of kilometers/hour versus miles/hour and the value of c as well, either 3 x 108 m/s versus 186,000 mi/s.  Finally, there’s the matter of time dilation.  Valtonen says that it was disproven in 2019.  However, I remember reports that experiments have proven relativity several times since the seventies.  Without time dilation or delay, they are able to communicate instantaneously with Earth most of their trip, like with an ansible.  But, I guess use of an ansible implies faster-than-light communication, which implies general relativity is still in effect, which contradicts the 2019 assertion.  

I think Valtonen could also have used a good editor to help flesh out the characters, adding more humanity, checking for continuity, and flagging hyperbole.  Once the crew make it to the Void, you get the sense that all they do is gaze in awe at their surroundings.  There are no descriptions of what they saw.  Then, Ellie does lots of interacting with the extraterrestrials and analysis of data input from their surroundings.  Polly takes a lot of pictures.  Jeb watches for everyone’s safety.  

When the crew finds the perfect habitable planet, it seems that there are already settlers for the planet.  So either I missed the description of the ship as carrying a chunk of humanity, or they arrived very soon after.  There’s a second wave of settlers as well, but the journal entries only cover about nine months.  So one would have to assume that the extraterrestrials taught us an even faster form of travel.  

My last big criticism is the handling of Polly’s pregnancy.  There’s no mention of any of the common issues she should be experiencing, like morning sickness, mood swings, swollen feet, and frequent urination.  In fact, we don’t hear about it again until the baby’s birth.  Then, there’s no mention of Polly being okay when the birth takes place.  She’s not mentioned again until two entries later, and then it’s about her work on the mission.  

I give this book two stars out of five.  I try to go easy on new authors, but this was the best I could do.  What I can say is that Valtonen has a marvelous vision for and faith in the goodness of humankind.  This could have been a terrific novel with more writing experience, beta readers, and a good editor.  I realize these are luxuries for the beginner indie writer.  But I believe he would find a lot of value and grow as a writer with this outside input.  I have his second novella, the sequel to this one.  I’m still going to read it because I believe indie authors have something to say, even if it’s rough at first.

Tournament Mage

Michael Taggart
Completed 4/6/2026, Reviewed 4/6/026
4 stars

Here’s another long series I’ve returned to, the Fledgling God series.  It began with Misfit Mage and ended with a little cliffhanger in Buried Mage.  It continues the story of Jason, the former professional gambler who now lives in a house of Mages in Louisville as he learns the ins and outs of being a Mage.  Once again, the world building is simply magnificent.  Taggart goes into tons of detail with the magic system and Jason’s ongoing training in it.  The main characters are often too good to be true, but it stresses found family and the love and support they provide each other.  The book contains a little spice, so this book is not for everyone.  But it’s not just an excuse for a full-on M/M romantasy; the emphasis of the book is on the magic, the character development, and the family that has evolved in the Louisville House.  

This book begins right at the end of the last book.  Just when Jason and the rest of the family return home from their latest adventure, they are greeted by a bank auditor who claims they owe three million pearls for all the cleaning of magical evidence needed after the battles the family had to deal with.  The bank is one of the oldest magical organizations in the world and not one to be trifled with.  However, Annabeth uses her magic to soften the auditor and help convince him they are not just a new house with two green first-year mages (Jason and Annabeth), but a tight family with some very gifted mages.  The auditor realizes that rather than put the mages into indentured servitude to pay off the debt, he can enter them in the big upcoming tournament which has a huge first prize.  The rest can be made from sponsorship income once the world of mages realizes how powerful Jason and Annabeth are.  He also tasks them with trying to find out more about the sudden popularity of something called Paths which groups of mages are incorporating into their practices.  

The whole family goes to the tourney but only Jason and Annabeth can compete.  They quickly discover that mage houses are looked down upon compared to the elite schools.  So the family must battle prejudice and hostility from the other contestants.  Once the first round begins, they realize their tasks are like an RPG (no doubt inspired by the rise in LitRPG books like Dungeon Crawler Carl).  J and A make it through the first level but are docked over 7000 points because they helped dozens of other teams evade the giant orcs and make it safely out of the first level.  They find out that their penalty comes mainly from a mage with a giant grudge against “house rats” and has powerful influence over the judges.  Starting with a massive point deficit, J and A begin the immensely more difficult second level.

That was a long plot summary for a long book.  And at over seven hundred pages, this doorstopper is only the first half of the Tournament.  Taggart spends a lot of time explaining how Jason absorbs, adapts, and incorporates new magic into his existing structure.  Jason is very puzzle oriented.  He is constantly working and reworking how he stores and access magic.  He also enhances his weapons which are primarily, his fists.  He shares this with Annabeth as well, helping refine her powers and weapons.  I have to say that for the first time, this became a little tedious in the middle when the two were fighting the giant, crazed, red-eyed ants.  The detail is amazing but went on a little too long as they encountered more and more powerful ants.  I plowed through most of the book, except for this section.  It took me about three days to get through battles with different levels of ants, reading only about twenty pages at time.  Happily, the book picks up again and the ending is terrific.  

The main characters are so sweet, it’s tough not to love them despite the Mary Sue characterization of Jason.  When the family decides to enter the tournament to save the house, it reminded me a little of a Brady Bunch episode.  There is a lot of hugging and cheeriness throughout the book which seemed excessive at first, but I guess I got caught up in the positive vibe they exuded.  I found myself looking forward to the hugs and words of support.  

Annabeth is wonderful.  She’s a seventy-year-old grandma who is a first-year mage developing into an incredible fighter.  Her magic is based on sound.  She uses music and her voice to enhance her fighting.  This comes in handy when she is blinded by Jason’s overzealous healing constructs.  Speaking of constructs, I love how they all had personalities of their own.  They range from the ones Jason makes to the attendants and servers at the tournament.  Even the Bank Crystal, which is Jason’s connection to the mage bank, has a personality with which Jason develops a relationship to enhance its assistance.  

And of course, there’s the cat.  Bermuda is a magical companion.  He has special powers but only comes to Jason’s aid when he feels like it.  After all, Bermuda is a cat.  He doesn’t speak like Princess Donut in Dungeon Crawler Carl, but he’s definitely an active participant in the story.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  I was completely engrossed in it, except during the last few ant chapters.  If they were a little shorter, maybe edited a little tighter, I think I could have given this book five stars.  It’s not great literature, but it is so much fun and the magic system so amazingly detailed, it’s easy to overlook its shortcomings.  This book was released in 2024, so I was hoping book six would be released this year.  Unfortunately, the author has life happening and is struggling to find time to finish it.  This is a self-published series and Taggart has a full-time job and other life duties.  I hope things lighten up for him because I can’t wait to read what else he can come up with.  

Redneck Revenant

David R. Slayton
Completed 3/31/2026, Reviewed 4/3/2026
4 stars

I was worried that it had been almost three years since I read Deadbeat Druid, the third book in the Adam Binder Novels.  I was also worried that this book was an afterthought since Druid had such a climactic ending.  Instead, I melted into it like it had just been yesterday.  Yes, I forgot a couple of the details and secondary characters, but within fifty pages I was right back in this universe, excited to be reacquainted with Adam and his boyfriend Vic.  This has become one of my favorite series, mostly because of how sweet Adam and Vic’s relationship is.  I also liked the side series in this universe that began with Rogue Community College and can’t wait for the next book to come out.  The original three volume Adam Binder series, which began with White Trash Warlock, was nominated for a 2024 Mythopoeic Award.

Adam lives in his brother Bobby’s basement where Vic often spends the night.  On Halloween night, after all the kids have stopped trick-or-treating, Bobby’s wife Annie, who died in book one, appears on their doorstep.  Alarmed, they don’t know if this is really Annie brought back to life or if she is walking-dead or some other dark magic.  They invite her in and ask questions but get no resolution.  Bobby comes home and is equally flabbergasted, not know how to feel after grieving for so long.  Adam sets out to solve this mystery, going to the Faerie King, Death’s daughter, and others to figure out who or what’s behind this.  Adam also learns that some young witches from his niece’s coven have gone suddenly missing.  Then Annie’s rich, controlling, and emotionally distant parents show up, confirm that Annie’s been alive all this time, and try to take her home with them.  For the love of his brother and the safety of all the magical people in his life, Adam tries to get to the bottom of the mystery of Annie’s return.

I really enjoyed this book despite it being so long since the last one.   It’s not a cozy mystery/fantasy, but it felt that way.  Just being back in the Adam Binder universe felt wonderful.  I appreciated Slayton’s memory jogs of the past plots and other characters’ relationships with Adam minus large info dumps.  He even brought in characters from Rogue Community College with reminders of who they were.  It made for a very rich story and a good jumping off place for restarting after the crazy ending of Druid.  

I just love Adam.  He’s still broken, but he’s gaining more confidence.  His boyfriend Vic calls him out on his low self-esteem.  “Adam, do you know what a self-sacrificing narcissist is?” “I’m guessing me?  Is that my diagnosis?”  “No.  Though you’re a level five smart ass…it’s someone who puts the needs of others ahead of theirs to avoid dealing with their own issues.”  Adam realizes this and slowly starts to examine his own avoidance of marrying Vic and finding their own place by trying to save the world.  It’s a profound moment in the book and a gut punch into my own belief that Adam is angelically selfless.  In reality, he’s trying avoid the tough issues in his life, thus hurting the people he loves.  This metanoia made me love him and Vic even more.

I liked how this book went back to being told just from Adam’s perspective.  I missed being in his head.  I expect Slayton will change it up in future volumes.  That’s fine, because I love Vic’s journey as well.  From closeted cop to out bisexual chef to Grim Reaper, Vic has grown a lot in the three years that transpired since the first book.  And his mom is a hoot, a Latina history professor who supports her son despite not allowing them to sleep together under her roof until they are married.  I love how she constantly needles Adam about getting a degree.  “Vic feigned interest, because he’d had a lifetime of it, but for Adam it was a wonder to spend time with a parent who wanted to talk about that sort of thing, who had something to say about a world greater than her corner of Oklahoma.” 

I give this book four stars out of five.  It reminded me of why I love Slayton’s storytelling and imagination.  The world building, between Denver and the Faerie realm, is still wonderful.  I lament that it may be a while before getting another Adam book since Slayton has the Rogue CC series going as well as a separate series, which I haven’t started yet.  But I’m glad for all of them. 

The Wolf and His King

Finn Longman
Completed 3/25/2026, Reviewed 3/29/2026
4 stars

This book is a queer retelling of the twelfth-century tale of Bisclavret the werewolf.  I had no knowledge of this legend but still enjoyed the book.  It is a well written tale of love, betrayal, isolation, and fealty.  Like many of the books I’ve been reading lately, the big conflict in this book is hiding truth out of fear.  In this case, it’s Bisclavret’s “wolf sickness.”  The prose is wondrous and the character development was excellent.  Longman made an interesting choice by only naming Bisclavret.  All the other characters are known only by their relationships to each other.  I still don’t know how I feel about that choice, but I did enjoy the book.  

Bisclavret’s father was lord in the kingdom.  When he died while his wife was pregnant with Bisclavret, his land reverted to the King since he had no male heir.  Bisclavret and his mother lived on a small cottage on the far end of the property that they were allowed to keep.  They had almost no interaction with anyone lest the secret of the wolf sickness be revealed.  Years later, the King has died and his son, the quasi-exiled Prince, ascends the throne.  Bisclavret’s cousin convinces him that he must go to the capital to pledge fealty to the new King.  (I’ll abbreviate the main character’s name to B going forward) B is reluctant because he has no control over his wolf sickness.  His cousin assures him that he will take care of him.  He also advises B that he may be able to ask for his father’s lands back as the male heir.  B reluctantly goes.  There he captures the fancy of the new King who can relate to being more or less exiled from the rest of the kingdom.  Not only does the King restore B’s lands but also makes him a knight after seeing B’s fighting prowess.  The cousin becomes the manager of the lands.  Then B suddenly disappears and the King is fraught with fear, despair, and disappointment until one day, an unusual wolf tamely befriends the King.  

Again, I didn’t know the original story, but I found this retelling exciting and engaging.  B’s disappearance made me reflect on my own embarrassment for ghosting people because I was afraid of what they would think of me if I revealed who I really was.  Whether it’s being gay, being depressed, being afraid, I found it easier to run rather than be honest.  It takes courage to be authentic.  This book did an excellent job of using metaphor to express this concept.

I also liked the unrequited love theme.  The new King falls for B and wants to do everything he can to keep him around.  B sees this to some extent, but does not acknowledge the King’s feelings, nor has the wherewithal to acknowledge it or any sense of love in himself.  When the “tame” wolf appears and the King senses it is pledging fealty to him, it broke my heart.  

There’s also a kink in the story where the King’s Ward, a young woman about B and the King’s age, declares love for B.  The courtship is odd.  B sees it more as duty than as love.  The Ward is insistent in her feelings, and the King had always promised he’d respect her right to marry who she chooses.  However, this is what precipitates B’s disappearance which throws everyone into chaos.  

Longman did an excellent job of developing believable characters in B, the King, the Ward, and the cousin.  I was completely sucked into the story.  My only complaint is that once again, the fatal flaw of the protagonist is fear of being honest.  It has appeared in so many stories I’ve read recently, including the gay hockey romances.  I’m beginning to grow tired of it, but it is pervasive throughout literature, and not just in romances.  I guess at my age, I’ve come to realize life is too short to be afraid to be authentic.  Books like this reaffirm that belief.  I give this book four stars out of five.

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario

Matt Dinneman
Completed 3/22/2026, Reviewed 3/23/2026
4 stars

This is the second book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.  I enjoyed this book thoroughly.  However, it didn’t feel as original and exciting as the first book.  I expected that there would be a sort of sophomore slump with the second book.  These novels appeared online, similar to The Martian, and were published traditionally after developing a huge following.  So sophomore slump may be a misnomer.  Instead, maybe I can say that the author settled into a groove.  The story is still fast paced and exciting with a doomsday scenario for a climax.  But I know now it’s about settling in for the ride.

This book takes place on level three.  Everything is more challenging and there is much more room for getting killed.  Carl, still running around barefoot, in boxers and a one sleeved bomber jacket, is accompanied by Princess Donut, the talking cat, and her pet dino raptor, Mongo.  Because of the race and class Donut chose, their advisor, Mordecai, has become their manager.  Now they have much more information and guidance about the dungeon and their options.  In this book, they are sidetracked by side quests.  One involves a terrifying circus, another, the disappearance of sex workers.  There is still a lot of violence and gore, as one would expect in a DnD game, but also compassion exhibited by Carl and Donut towards the NPCs who were changed into terrifying clowns as well as the women who were forced into sex work.  Mordecai tries to keep the team from accepting these side quests, but their conscience gets the better of them.  Since they’ve leveled up, their stats are better and their weapons more effective.  But the scenario still requires the finesse of Carl and Donut to complete their quests without causing massive loss of life of the NPCs and the other crawlers.

This description makes the book sound more somber.  It really isn’t, as the first book was also full of moral questions Carl asks concerning the humans and the others who are dying in this game.  It is still a lot of fun but never loses sight of its humanity.  One of my favorite lines in the book is towards the end where Carl thinks, “And now that I had a moment to breath, my heart couldn’t stop pounding.  I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor, my hand to my chest.  How is this real?  How is this my life?”   So poignant!

The big character development here is with Princess Donut.  She becomes more aware of the moral issues involved and the reality of their situation.  She learns about caring for a pet with Mongo, who is an adorable menace, and helps Carl make tough decisions with a more humane perspective.  

Mordecai, on the other hand, remains somewhat of an enigma.  As an incubus, Mordecai can’t handle alcohol but goes on binges anyway.  He is very knowledgeable about the dungeon but carries the scars of having been a crawler himself.  He doesn’t make the best decisions for himself but does for Carl and Donut.  He gives them insight not only into the game, but also the galactic corporations who are controlling the strings and the effect Carl and Donut have on the media.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  The newness has worn off, but the enjoyment hasn’t.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Dinneman keeps the story fresh through all the dungeon levels.

Tough Guy

Rachel Reid
Completed 3/18/2026, Reviewed 3/18/2026
4 stars

This is the third book in the Game Changer series, aka Heated Rivalry.  This is also spicy M/M hockey romance.  I was initially worried I would find more of the same, but the plot is very different.  I was pleasantly surprised that I devoured this book in a matter of hours (a few last night, the rest this morning).  It’s a very sweet romance between a big, burly, anxiety-ridden ginger enforcer and his slender, makeup-wearing crush from when they were seventeen in a small town in Nova Scotia.  An enforcer is a defense player whose main job is to get into fights on the ice to protect his teammates.  It’s a toxic job and both characters struggle with its implications.

Ryan is the enforcer.  He’s a 6’7” bearded ginger who is kind of out, but really just doesn’t talk about it.  He is on heavy anti-anxiety and anti-depression meds which severely affect his sexual performance.  At the age of thirty-one, he has been traded almost annually between hockey teams.  The last trade was after a meltdown on the ice.  In his new team hometown of Toronto, he runs into the guy whose family he stayed with for a year during his junior career.  Fabian is the same age.  He’s almost the complete opposite, an indie musician and femboy who likes makeup and lacy things, trying to make ends meet working in a pharmacy.  Despite hating most of the junior hockey players who boarded with his family, Fabian had a huge crush on Ryan, who was quiet, polite, and friendly towards him.  When they run into each other all these years later, they can’t believe their eyes.  They exchange phone numbers, despite Ryan’s painful shyness.  After a few tentative texts and meetings, they let their old passions take over.  They are falling for each other, but both believe they are not right for each other.  Fabian hates hockey because of the toxic environment he grew up in, and because of the innate violence.  Ryan believes a man as beautiful as Fabian would never fall for a pathetically introverted oaf whose job is to beat up people.  Thus is the conflict that threatens their bourgeoning relationship.

The best aspect of this book is how the characters deal with mental illness.  This theme eventually ties into the mental health foundation that Shane and Ilya created in Heated Rivalry.  I was surprised and pleased to see it appear so prominently in this book.  Ryan is lovable and damaged.  There’s a beautiful scene on a plane to another game where his only friend among his teammates, Wyatt, talks him through his severe anxiety during takeoff and landing.  At the pharmacy, Fabian cues into Ryan’s anxiety and takes the lead in the mostly one-sided conversation.  It’s awkward, but also very sweet.  The scene makes you fall for both of them.  

I really liked how Reid came up with different plots for each book so far.  They’re similar in that there is some kind of conflict that may keep the two men apart.  Toxic masculinity in male team sports runs through all the books as well.  But the circumstances in each book are different enough to keep you turning the pages.  You can pooh-pooh this as romantic fluff, but the issues that the main characters deal with are very real and unique to the circumstances.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I could barely put it down and my heart was so warmed by the end.  Definitely a strong addition to the series.

Elatsoe

Darcie Little Badger
Completed 3/15/2026, Reviewed 3/16/2026
3 stars

This is the first book in the Elatsoe series.  Last year, I read Sheine Lende which is the prequel.  It won last year’s Lodestone Award, the YA novel award presented at the Hugo Ceremony.  Elatsoe was nominated for the 2021 Lodestone but didn’t win.  I thought Sheine Lende was the superior book, richer in world building and character development.  Elatsoe is good, but it wasn’t as rich in the history of the Lipan Apache.  It spent a lot of time recounting the main character’s six times great grandmother’s adventures.  It felt more like info dump than world building.  Still, for a first novel, it’s good.

Elatsoe, shortened to Ellie because people mispronounce her name, is a seventeen-year-old whose cousin Trevor was killed in a single vehicle crash under very suspicious circumstances.  Upon his death, she is visited by his spirit who reveals his murderer and begs her to bring him to justice.  She accedes, investigating the murderer with her bestie, Jay, and the support of her family.  Ellie can raise the spirits of animals from the Underworld, among other gifts.  Her dog is a raised spirit.  She’s very tempted to bring Trevor’s spirit back and is even urged to do so by his widow, but her parents warn her of the danger of the evil that comes back with the spirits of people.  What she uncovers about the murderer unlocks a huge mystery of magic and its abuse by the people in Trevor’s hometown.  She also learns more about her own gifts, her six-great-grandmother’s experience, and their relationships with the Underworld.

Ellie is a pretty cool character.  At seventeen, she’s torn between college and opening a private investigator business where she can use her gifts to help solve mysteries.  She’s smart, funny, and a very responsible teen.  She is asexual, not having any predilection for sexuality, which she declares to Jay.  She has a great relationship with her parents who support her in her exploration of her gifts while teaching her the lessons of her six-great.  There were times, however, when I felt she was a little too good to be true, almost a Mary Sue, with too few flaws and unrealistic cheeriness for a teen on the cusp of adulthood.  Still, it’s hard not to like her.  There’s one poignant scene in a rock souvenir shop where she exhibits her ability to deal with the prejudices of white people.  Again, a little too perfect of a behavior, but it does exhibit how she deals with racism.  

I also liked Jay.  He’s a descendant of the Fae.  He even has pointy ears that are usually covered by his hair.  The relationship between Jay and Ellie was sweet, if a little too sweet.  At their age, I think it would have been more realistic for Jay to have some feelings toward Ellie despite her orientation.  Instead, he’s relegated to a quasi-Gary Sue sidekick.

The overall tone of the book is rather cartoonish.  I rolled my eyes at some of the dialogue because of the language used.  I really bristled when one of the bad guys refers to the “meddling kids.”  That was just too banal for the generations who grew up with Scooby Doo.  It betrays the build-up of tension and makes the confrontation with the evil seem extreme and out of place.  Sheine Lende was also a YA novel, but it worked more effectively from this perspective.

My favorite part of the book was her ability to call to the spirits of animals.  There’s a particularly wild scene with swarms of trilobites.  And who wouldn’t love a ghost mammoth.  No spoilers 😉 It also explores her relationship with the Underworld and compares and contrasts it with her six-great, who was the most skilled wielder of magic in her family history.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  It was a little too juvenile for a book about seventeen-year-olds dealing with mortal danger.  It’s an enjoyable, easy read despite the gruesome climax.  It’s worth reading for context for its prequel, although they can both stand alone.  I do like this alternate-Texas that Little Bear created and am interested in what her future books will explore.

The Spear Cuts Through Water

Simon Jimenez
Completed 3/12/2026, Reviewed 3/12/2026
5 stars

This is a very complex novel, both in form and story telling style.  It is a story within a story within a story.  It changes between first, second, and third person at the drop of a hat.  The prose is lush and stylistic.  All that combined would usually turn me off a book.  I don’t mind making an effort to read a complex book, but sometimes it’s too much and I can’t remain in the headspace to get everything out of it.  With this book, I found it a compelling challenge that I wanted to conquer.  I was rewarded with a superb tale that kept me driven to finish.  This book won the 2023 Robert Holdstock Award which is the British Fantasy Society award for Fantasy (there is a separate BFS award for Horror).  

The main plot is about two teens, Jun and Keema.  Jun is the grandson of the Emperor.  His father and uncles are known as the Terrors.  They are cruel and sadistic.  Jun was in the Red Peacock army of his father and had a red peacock tattooed on his face.  He now has to cover his face with a mask to avoid being associated with his father’s evil army.  He is on a mission to get his grandmother, the Moon Goddess, to the sea so that she can break the curse of the turtle communication system and bring down the Emperor.  By chance of fate, he meets Keema, a one-armed teen and last survivor of the Daware tribe.  He promised his captain that he will deliver her Spear to the mysterious Shan who lives by the sea.  They work together on their missions with the primary goal of helping the Goddess bring down the Emperor and his sons and free the nation.  

This story line is told on the stage of the Inverted Theater, a place out of time, attended by shadows and one living human, the subject of the second person narration.  That person has transcended into this other dimension while being told the story by lola, their grandmother who keeps the story of their lineage and the mystery of their family’s possession of the Spear.  It takes a lot of effort to figure out that this is what’s happening.  Second person narration always throws me for a loop.  Then, when mixed with the third person telling of the story of Jun and Keema, and with first person comments from a myriad of major and minor characters, it makes for an extremely complicated book.  Yet, within the first fifty pages, I got the form figured out and was able to read the rest with minimal confusion.  The only remaining piece of complexity was the prose.  It is very lush, not just with the description and world building, but also with the movement of the plot.  There were times I missed key details and connections and regularly had to go back and reread a page or two.  

It took a while to warm up to both Jun and Keema.  They are young and carry an annoying false bravado.  They often got into fist fights, grappling, and wrestling over differences of opinion.  However, through this behavior coupled with the intense journey they are on together, they slowly fall in love.  It is new to both and they deny their feelings, mostly notably Jun who does not believe he is worthy of love after the atrocities he committed as a Red Peacock.  

One of the more interesting ideas in this book is the turtle communication network.  Long ago, the Moon Goddess “gifted” turtles with the ability to communicate with each other telepathically.  The emperors used this network for the spreading of news but also exploited it as a spy network.  The turtles can speak to humans as well and have an empathic ability to sense what is going on inside people.  I found this to be very unique and creative, a sort of ansible for fantasy.

This book is not for everyone.  It is a difficult read, requiring attention and patience.  If you go into it knowing this, it will help you understand what’s going on quickly.  If you need a straightforward narrative, this is not the book for you.  I found the world building astounding and the prose simply delicious.  After getting used to bopping between the narrative voices, I had no trouble following it.  In fact, when it jumped back to second person and lola’s storytelling scenes, it was a nice break from the intensity of the action in the Jun and Keema narrative.  This book should have been shortlisted for more awards, but I can see how its complexity may have put off some readers and nominating committees.  Leave it to the British to embrace such a magnificent, well-crafted, complicated book.  I give it five stars out of five.  

Heated Rivalry

Rachel Reid
Completed 3/5/2026, Reviewed 3/9/2026
4 stars

Well, between Game Changer and this book, I watched the Heated Rivalry series.  So I had a lot of images already in my head, regardless of the fact that Ilya is described differently in the book (dark and hairy vs. blond and smooth).  My impression of the book was skewed by this.  I liked it much more than Game Changer, mostly because it shed a lot more light on the internal conflicts of the Ilya and Shane as their relationship progressed.  Despite the overuse of adverbs, I think this is the better novel.  I think the character arcs were stronger because of their inner dialogues.  Yes, the spicy content is as good as Changer.  And yes, I will continue to read this series.  And just to be clear, I was a hockey fan before the series 😊 from the early days of the Colorado Avalanche when I was living in Denver, with a nod to the Jersey Devils rubbed off from my hockey playing brothers.  

Since the series has become one of the most watched in recent history, with one of the episodes being the most watched ever, a plot summary seems moot, but here it goes.  Ilya is a Russian prospect for the NHL.  Shane is a Canadian prospect.  They meet at a junior championship match where they hook up.  They are drafted by two different teams and become the two hottest players in the NHL, and bitter rivals on the ice.  However, their hook ups continue when they play in the same city.  Eventually, their relationship becomes an obsession, hiding their true feelings for each other.  Both are afraid of their feelings and the repercussions if their story leaks.  Ilya, who is bisexual, has never felt this way with anyone before.  He also carries the weight of his exceedingly critical father and the financial demands of his brother and stepmother.  Shane struggles accepting that he is gay, and fears coming out to his hockey-crazed domineering mother.  So they try to find ways to hide their feelings and relationship until Scott and Kip from the previous book have their infamous kiss on the ice after Scott wins the championship cup.  And the floodgates of feelings are breached.

As I said above, it’s hard to separate this book from the series.  My biggest observation is that we see more of the internal struggles of Ilya and Shane, with neither wanting to admit they have fallen in love with each other.  This helped a lot, particularly with Ilya, who constantly throws barbs and sarcasm around as a way to hide his true feelings.  The series made him out to be more of a jerk in the first few episodes compared to the book’s first half.  His internal dialogue softened that behavior, making me more empathetic toward him.  Shane, in comparison, was vulnerable in both media.  

I don’t have much else to say about the book.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it took me a while to finish it, trying to read it while on the fun- and activity-filled Star Trek Cruise.  I do have the next couple of books in the series, so I’ll be getting to those soon after catching up on my genre fiction TBR and book club lists.  I give this book four stars out of five.  

Guess What? I Love You

Mike Maimone
Completed 2/21/2026, Reviewed 2/21/2026
5 stars

I discovered Mike Maimone on social media.  Clips of his music began showing up in my feeds, probably because I tend to view videos by gay musicians.  Mike was very different, with a gravelly Dr. John kind of voice and a distinctive blues/jazz/ballad fusion style.  With all those slashes, you can probably say he transcends styles.  I began following him and learned more about where he is in his life.  He is a widower, having lost his husband and soul mate from an aggressive form of leukemia less than a year after they met.  However, in that time, they both discovered they had found true love.  This book is Mike’s memoir of their relationship.

After more than ten albums, many as part of a band, Mike was going solo.  He was a single man trying the gay dating apps after two unsuccessful relationships.  This year was going to be different, it was going to be the year of saying “Yes,” opening himself to new experiences.  One night, he gets a hit on an app, an older man who was Mike’s type.  They began chatting long distance as Mike was working in Nashville and Howard was in LA.  Something clicked and they hit it off online.  When they finally met, it clicked again.  Soon Mike was falling head over heels for Howard.  They quickly began planning visits whenever their schedules allowed.  Then came talk of a long-term relationship.  On the next trip, Mike planned to propose to Howard when he got the call that Howard was very sick. 

I have not read many memoirs in the last twenty years, not since the days of David Sedaris and Augustin Burroughs.  Unlike those, this book is like a journal of finding the love of your life and then being devastated by loss of him in less than a year.  Mike is brutally honest about how they came to fall in love despite their many differences.  It’s filled with excitement, anxiousness, self-doubt, and humor.  Then he holds back nothing as he experiences the stages of grief during Howard’s short illness.  

My reaction to this book was instant love.  As a gay man myself, I could completely relate to those early stages of discovery in a relationship, where everything is new and exciting and sexy.  And having lived through a devastating breakup and more recently, the sudden loss of a close friend, his story hit me hard.  I read most of this book on a plane ride from Portland to Orlando for the Star Trek Cruise.  Despite my excitement of my trip and the distractions of a plane ride, I found myself immersed in Mike’s experience, my eyes leaking until we came in for our landing.  

This is a deeply personal account of love and loss.  You don’t have to be gay to get it.  The emotions transcend orientation.  And if the book wasn’t enough, Mike also released a companion album.  I don’t have any music apps, but I’ve listened to many clips, and the songs are just as gorgeous as this book. (This may be the push I need to get one so I can listen to the whole album uninterrupted).  I’ll probably never be able to look at a butterfly again without thinking about Mike and Howard.  I give this book five stars out of five.  

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Matt Dinniman
Completed 2/17/2026, Reviewed 2/18/2026
5 stars

This book was a hoot and a half.  It’s LitRPG, a hybrid genre of science fiction and/or fantasy with the mechanics of a role-playing game, like Dungeons and Dragons, where the characters are aware they are in an RPG.  It has quests, battles, loot, managing stats and inventory, and leveling up.  Being relatively new to DnD (only been playing consistently for two years) and never having read LitRPG before, I thoroughly enjoyed this.  It is a little cartoonish at times, but the main character has a well-developed character questioning the morality of the situation he is in.  It also has a snarky talking cat.  How can you not love that?

In the middle of the night, Coast Guard veteran Carl goes outside to fetch his possibly soon-to-be ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning cat, Princess Donut, which is up a tree.  Suddenly, every building within sight collapses into a pancake.  Only people who were outside at the time of the collapse survived.  The two enter a stairwell down which takes them into a dungeon, complete with exploding goblins, maniacal llamas, and goo slugs.  They find out they are in an RPG game along with all the other survivors of Earth.  It’s run by aliens and broadcast throughout the galaxy to trillions of viewers.  But this reality game show has a twist: when players die, they really die.  And if anyone survives all the way to level 18, that person will inherit the Earth.

While this book is really fun, it’s also quite gruesome.  Yeah, there’s gore, but the really unsettling part is that players die by the millions.  Also, some of the monsters were originally humans or aliens from a previous season.  There’s one particularly rough scene where Carl and Princess Donut are trying to kill a particularly horrifying and dangerous monster when Carl realizes it’s a woman begging for her life in Spanish.  At one point Carl and Donut come across a group of people from a senior nursing home who survived the apocalypse because their home was on fire.  They join the home’s four employees in trying to keep them alive until they can level up in level 3 and gain some powers.  I was surprised and impressed by these scenes.  Dinniman did a great job of integrating Carl’s morality into his situation.  It’s not just any action-adventure story.  It has heart.  Specifically, Carl has heart.

Princess Donut is also great.  Rather than just being categorized as a pet to Carl’s character, she gains the ability to speak, as well as special powers.  She becomes a playing character.  Dinniman keeps Donut in the mindset of a cat while still acquiring some human emotion.  She has many funny scenes in dialogue with Carl, namely whenever she references other men who come over when Carl is at work and moan and growl with his girlfriend behind closed doors.  She has no idea that she’s making Carl more miserable than the potentially fatal RPG situation he’s in.  

Another funny and gut-wrenching scene is when the two are pulled out for interviews, just like the behind the scenes interviews on shows like Survivor and American Idol.  While funny, they give Carl more opportunity to feel icky about his task at hand, i.e., killing to survive.  Note that there are a lot of funny scenes, but this aspect of Carl’s personality makes him much more three dimensional than your average action hero.

I’m going with five stars out of five on this book, only because it is so original to me, and as a DnD player, I could immerse myself in the story and into Carl’s character.  The action is fast paced, the writing is very readable, and the world building is marvelous.  Friends had been telling me I had to read this series.  I’m glad I finally did, even though it was for my online book club.  Now I’ve got to figure out how to fit the next seven books in the series into my ever-expanding TBR list.

The Sword of Shannara

Terry Brooks
Completed 2/9/2026, Reviewed 2/9/2026
2 stars

Ugh, what a slog!  This book was so derivative of Lord of the Rings that I couldn’t help myself from comparing the two through the whole read.  It was very overdramatic with almost no comic relief.  And while LOTR at least had three women characters, Shannara only had one, with a smaller role than Arwen.  I only liked three characters, a heroic and selfless dwarf, a rock troll, and a thief modeled after a character from The Prisoner of Zenda (per Wikipedia).  The book appears on a couple of “Best of..” lists.  My guess is because it was one of the first epic fantasy novels since LOTR to hit the mainstream, feeding the new generation of LOTR fans hungry for more of the same.  If I read it back when it was published in ’77, I might have liked it more.  But nearly fifty years later, it simply feels like sloppy fan fiction.  

Two diminutive brothers are visited by a strange Druid.  Allanon (whose pronunciation I could never divorce from the nearly identically spelled twelve step program) info dumps on the two that Shea is Flick’s adopted half-Elven brother.  Shea is the last of the Shannara line who can wield the Sword.  However, the Sword has been stolen by the evil and ancient Druid Brona.  Brona is trying to take over the world by pitting all the peoples against each other.  Shea must find the Sword and destroy Brona.  Along the way, he picks up his best friend and prince named Menion.  Flick also comes along.  They end up in a fellowship with a surly king named Balinor, a Dwarf named Hendel, and Elven brothers named Durin and Dayel.  They are chased by dark Skull Bearers, gnomes, and trolls.  Eventually they break apart.  Shea gets captured by gnomes and rescued by a thief and a rock troll.  They go off in search of the Sword.  The others go in search of Shea and to help defend the Southern Kingdom from Brona’s massive army of gnomes and trolls.  Oh yeah, there’s an outcast gnome that has an obsession with the Sword.

So yeah, it’s like Brooks took the plot points and characters of LOTR, threw in a sprinkling of Zenda, jumbled them in a sack, and pulled the elements out at random.  He did throw in a couple of other ideas, like the Sword being for good, not evil; the benevolent rock troll; a Siren; and a princess named Shirl in distress.  However, these could not distract me from obvious LOTR parallels.  

I never warmed up to most of the characters.  I did like Hendel the Dwarf.  He seemed like a caring, compassionate soul who went farther than the others in putting himself at risk for Shea.  I also liked Panamon Creel, the thief.  Despite being a tempestuous, one-handed trickster, he added some humor to Shea’s situation.  Keltset, his mute Rock Troll sidekick, was obviously a gentle giant with more secrets than any other character.  The best scenes were when Shea, Panamon, and Keltset were traveling together.  

Secrets was a big theme in this book.  Despite the myriad of expositions, Shea never fully understood the journey he was on.  Then he kept what he did learn from other characters like Flick and Panamon.  Allanon was big secret holder.  Balinor kept a lot to himself, particularly at the beginning of the book.  Everyone was afraid of telling everyone the whole truth about everything to spare each other feelings of fear or despair.  Reading all that was frustrating.  There would have been less trouble if people just told each other the truth.  

Brooks also used a common ploy to get more words down on the page by having each of the characters going over and over their situations in their heads.  Rather than add to the characterization, I found it tedious.  And the info dumps were mind numbing.  

I could not get my heart in this book.  It took me nearly two weeks to read this doorstopper.  The only thing I really liked were the five illustrations by the Brothers Hildebrandt.  I loved their LOTR calendars in the mid ‘70s and the coffee table books of their art.  While they perpetuated ideas that were never mentioned in the books, such as the hobbits’ feet being oversized, Balrogs having wings, and Aragorn being broad and bearded, it was just great that someone had such detailed renderings of the events in the trilogy.  So when this book appeared in bookstores with a Hildebrandt cover, I was intrigued.  I bought the book as a teenager, but never read it.  Having finally done so, I can tell my younger self, “You didn’t miss much.”  Two stars out of five.

Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovsky
Completed 1/26/2026, Reviewed 1/26/2026
5 stars

This book blew my socks off.  This is excellent space science fiction without being a space opera.  In my mind, and in the definition from several sources, a space opera is piece of fiction set in outer space with a typically simplistic and melodramatic nature.  This was anything but simplistic or melodramatic.  This was high drama featuring the evolution of uplifted spiders and the frustrations of a colony ship looking for a final home for the human race.  Despite taking nearly two weeks to finish this 600-page doorstopper, I ate this up.  This book won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke award.  

The book opens with a planet that has been terraformed for colonization by humans.  However, as an experiment, a ship is about to plant monkeys on the planet with a virus constructed to uplift the monkeys, that is, to make them evolve into sentient beings quickly, hopefully similar to humans.  As the last survivor of an accident with the ship, the mastermind of the experiment, Kern, escapes to a shuttle and uploads her brain into its computer and hibernates.  The shuttle, as it orbits the planet, sends messages down, awaiting a response from intelligent monkeys.  Several thousand years later a colony ship from Earth containing the last surviving half million humans approaches the planet.  However, the shuttle doesn’t let them land to protect her monkeys, forcing them to look elsewhere for a new home.  Thus begins a conflict with the shuttle and on board the colony ship.  Meanwhile, an unexpected species begins to evolve.  Spiders.

A long plot summary for a long book.  The third person narration alternates chapters between the Kern and the evolving spiders, and later, between the spiders and a classicist on the colony ship named Holsten.  This provides an amazing narrative following generations upon generations of spiders.  It initially follows one, named Portia and her descendants, also named Portia.  While sounding strange, it gives a sense of continuity to the story, despite being different spiders.  It also follows Bianca and eventually, Fabian, a male spider.  Each spider character changes as the evolution progresses but keeping the names consistent over time was a stroke of genius.  Their character development goes from simple primal survival to full on mature personhood in a bio-tech society.  Sure, spiders are creepy, but being inside their minds over the centuries induces amazing empathy.

As for the humans, Kern is a dangerous megalomaniac.  When she uploads her mind to the shuttle, the result is terrifying.  On the colony ship, Holsten provides continuity with the human past, which becomes useful for translating to the old Empire language of Kern.  Holsten is a gentle soul, one of the oldest members of the Key Core crew.  He observes as well as participates but always seems to pause to consider the humanity of a given situation and of the actions of his crewmates.  He provides a great counterpoint to the more A-type personalities of the other leaders of the ship.  Despite there being a captain, a lead engineer, a lead security officer, and a lead scientist, Holsten is the one who has more introspection as he bounces in and out of hibernation.  He’s basically the moral barometer of the remnants of the human race.

There are a lot of themes running through the narrations:  the cost of survival, the definition of sentience and of what we would call humanity, equality of the sexes, religion, war, and technology.  It’s chock full of interesting insights that the spiders have as they grow as a species.  And it’s an interesting reflection on the human civilization that destroyed Earth.  It’s powerfully presented without being preachy.  I was constantly amazed at how it all played out as the spiders evolved.

I give this book five stars out of five.  I loved everything about this book, from the style of prose to the amazing climax.  I approached it cautiously because I had heard nothing but glowing reviews from friends whose reviews I usually agree with.  This book has been on my TBR pile for a long time.  As I said in previous reviews of Tchaikovsky, I regret having waited so long to get to it.  Now I can’t wait to jump into the rest of the series.  If you’d like to check out a shorter Tchaikovsky novel first, do read Service Model.  It was one of my favorites from last year.  

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.