The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

Robert Rankin
Completed 8/25/2023, Reviewed 8/26/2023
3 stars

This book lost in a runoff vote for my book club.  It was cheap so I got it.  It was fun, but not uproariously funny.  The ideas are great, like the title.  It had a lot of good running gags.  But in the end, I felt kind of empty, sort of like eating a big puff of cotton candy.  It’s sweet and fun, but in the end, it didn’t fill you up at all.  I was glad I read it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to read another book by this author. 

Jack is a farm boy who leaves for the big city.  In this case, it’s Toy City, formerly known as Toy Town.  It’s grown immeasurably since its early days.  When Jack gets there, he finds it inhabited by sentient toys.  He comes across a teddy bear named Eddie who was an assistant to the great private investigator Bill Winkie.  Winkie is missing so Eddie has taken up his latest case, finding the serial killer behind the murders of famous nursery rhyme characters.  The two team up to solve a mystery that could mean the destruction of Toy City itself.

Despite being pretty fluffy, the characterization was pretty good.  Jack and Eddie are well developed characters.  Eddie is constantly trying to be taken more seriously than a teddy bear normally would be.  And he has a word-relationship problem so he can never complete a simile.  He can only say “as good as” or “as crazy as”, never completing the thought.  Jack is also well thought out as a thirteen year old doing adult things.  Some of it’s a little questionable, like getting drunk with Eddie.  I found that disturbing.  But overall, I liked Jack.  He’s read all the Bill Wilkie pulp detective novels so he knows how to play this PI game better than Eddie.  

What I liked most about this book was that it was rather fun.  It didn’t take itself seriously.  It was a lot like Robert Asprin, although I thought Asprin was better.  It’s a bit Monty Python-esque, just not quite as good.  The author is British after all.  Some of the jokes and puns fall flat, but others work.   I give this book three stars out of five.  

Nettle & Bone

T Kingfisher
Completed 8/19/2023, Reviewed 8/19/2023
3 stars

I really liked the byline of this book.  “This isn’t the kind of fairy tale where the princess marries the prince.  It’s the one where she kills him.”  This is a subversive novel in that sense.  It is pretty dark, but very satisfying.  The prose is excellent, as I’ve come to expect from Kingfisher.  I’ve really enjoyed her work so far.  The last book of hers I read was A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, which was really inventive.  This one is inventive too, but I found it a slower read.  It’s only about 250 pages, but I found I couldn’t really zip through it until the last fifty pages or so.  That’s when it really grabbed me and I fought immense drowsiness to get through the end.  This book was nominated for a 2023 Hugo, which will be announced later this year, and a 2022 Nebula.  While I think this book is pretty good, I don’t think it’s exactly award worthy.

Marra is the youngest of three princesses.  Her eldest sister is married off to the prince of the large, neighboring kingdom to the north.  She dies by “accident” less than a year later.  Then her next sister is married to the prince.  When she becomes pregnant, Marra goes to visit her.  There she finds that the prince abuses her sister.  Vowing vengeance on the prince, she completes some impossible tasks to get the favor of a gravewitch to help her in her quest.  Together with the witch, a demon-possessed chicken, a reluctant fairy godmother, a handsome former knight, and a dog made of bones, she attempts her quest to kill the abusive prince.

What I’m finding of Kingfisher is that her prose always seems to be excellent.  Even when, as in this case, the story falls a little flat, her books are always incredibly readable.  Her world building is also quite amazing.  Her system of magic in this book, which not extensive, is unique and well defined.  I was impressed by the different levels of fairy godmothers.  I also liked that Marra was able to perform the “impossible” tasks as requested by the gravewitch.  

I really liked Marra as a character.  While she vows vengeance, she’s a rather reluctant hero.  When her sisters were married off, she was sent to a convent for safe keeping in case both died and she would have to wed the prince.  She actually liked the convent.  There she joined in the chores willingly and had time for sewing and embroidery, which she loved doing.  And the sisters were kind to her, and to each other.  When she leaves the convent for her quest, she’s nervous, unsure of what she’s doing, only knowing that she must do something to help her abused sister.  

Overall, I did like the book.  I just don’t feel it should win an award.  I would however, like to read more of Kingfisher.  She reminds me for some reason of Patricia McKillip in her style, content, and length of books.  She doesn’t have to write a huge tome to get a point across.  Sometimes a sweeping saga isn’t necessary for every idea.  A short book can do just fine to give you an entertaining fantasy experience.  I give this book three out of five stars.  It’s very good and very enjoyable.    

Babel

RF Kuang
Completed 8/13/2023, Reviewed 8/13/2023
5 stars

This is a beautifully written alternate history of the British Empire in the 1800s, where the Empire has achieved its dominion through the use of magical silver and language translation.  With themes of slavery, oppression, racism, sexism, and colonialism, it creates a personalized view of these -isms and reveals the haughty, narcissistic culture that Britian had in dealing with other nations it thought were barbaric.  It’s also a metaphor for how we as modern nations still treat other countries and peoples, particularly in this time of the rise of Karens and other insidious white supremist thinking.  This book won the 2022 Nebula, the 2023 Locus Fantasy Award, and was nominated for the 2023 World Fantasy Award.

Robin Swift is a Chinese boy plucked from Canton during a cholera plague by the mysterious Professor Lovell.  He takes Robin as a ward and trains him in Latin, Greek, Chinese, and English.  Lovell then gets him enrolled at University College at Oxford where he trains to become a translator and a manipulator of magical silver.  While at Oxford, Robin discovers that there’s a secret society called Hermes whose mission is to undermine the magical silver industry that Britain uses to dominate half the globe.  Robin is torn between his love of learning and languages and the battle against injustice.  This comes to a head when Robin and his classmates go to China with the Professor to help translate between the local Cantonese government and the British corporations that are trying to sell opium under the guise of free market capitalism.  

This book just astounded me.  First it drew on my amateur fondness for languages and linguistics, then turned into a gripping tale of revolution and world peace and justice.  I was also just amazed at how much I loved the prose.  For a book not told in first person, it beautifully captured Robin’s character development from abused child to comfortable student to revolutionary.  The prose also created three supporting characters of great depth and individuality:  Ramy, a Muslim Indian; Victoire, a Haitian refugee; and Letty, a spoiled British Admiral’s daughter.  Together with Robin, they all are language lovers and are honored to be at Oxford’s School of Translation, aka Babel.  But this slowly deteriorates as they mature and have more exposure to the tenets of Hermes.

I did not really have much sense of what this book was about.  Even the book’s subtitle, “The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution,” was rather confusing.  This is the current read for my book club, and there was concern that this book would be pretentious, especially with a long title like that.  But I found it personal and accessible and deeply empathized with the main characters.  I don’t always like Regency British fantasy, finding it too haughty to tolerate.  But it worked in well with the conflicts of Robin and his cohort.  Professor Lovell is simply ghastly, typically bigoted, self-centered, and narcissistic, just like most of the faculty at Babel and the other students throughout Oxford.  

I thought the world building was quite impressive, bringing in some anachronisms for which the author apologizes and explains in the forward.    But it’s all so subtle, like the railway system being built a few decades earlier than in reality, and of course the tower of Babel in the middle of Oxford, which never existed.  Kuang did a terrific job making it all seem natural and fluid.  Add in the magical silver and you have a fantastical and oppressive empire in which it is easy to become complacent unless the country that’s being oppressed is your homeland.  

I give this book five stars out of five.  I was bowled over by how much I loved this book.  Everything from the prose to the characterization simply worked for me.  It’s a long book, over five hundred pages, and it took me a week to finish, mostly because work had me so exhausted during the week, I got almost no reading done until the weekend.  I think some people might find it dry, especially the first half which features Robin and his cohort in their first three and half years at Babel.  It’s a lot of detail about languages, their relationships, and the problems with translations.  But I found it fascinating.  

Jade Legacy

Fonda Lee
Completed 8/6/2023, Reviewed 8/6/2023
5 stars

I know I’ve said this a lot lately, but wow!  Wow!  This book was terrific.  I’m glad I read the whole trilogy close together.  I was completely invested in the lives of the Kaul family.  Reading this book was like coming back to a warm place, even though it’s about Mafia-like families where the primary conflict is over the magical Jade and who dominates the Jade trade and thus the economy of the island of Kekon.  There’s lots of violence and politicking, but it’s so well-conceived and executed with amazing character development that I couldn’t put it down.  I got through this 700+ page book in just over a week, flying through it in basically over two weekends.  I would have gotten through it sooner if work didn’t get in the way. LOL.  This book won the Canadian Aurora Award and the Locus Fantasy Award for 2022.

This final volume is a sprawling conclusion to the Green Bone Saga trilogy.  Lots of things happen, but the crux of this book is the ultimate confrontation between the No Peak and the Mountain clans.  The Kaul family runs the No Peak clan.  They navigate negative press and pressure from the Mountain clan, trying to survive in the Jade business.  Hilo, the Pillar; Shae, his sister the Weather Man; and Anden, their adoptive cousin work together to expand the No Peak clan’s influence abroad.  But whenever they take one step forward, the Mountain clan pushes them two steps back.  

Needless to say, the world building is amazing.  I was completely immersed in this pseudo-Asian culture and completely bought into the magic and power of Jade.  The prose is also just spectacular, lyrically descriptive without being overbearing.  The character development, well, it goes without saying that I felt a part of the lives of the Kaul family.  All three main characters mature, growing into their roles in the clan as well as in their personal lives.  I felt particularly attached to Anden who is gay and trying to balance his clan responsibilities with finding love in his life.  Similarly, Shae must come to grips with her own passions, allowing herself to love the man she has pined for for a long time.  And Hilo, while still hot-headed, grows into a formidable Pillar.  As for the Mountain clan, their Pillar, Ayt Mada, well, I can’t help picturing the amazing Michelle Yeoh playing her deliciously malevolently if this ever becomes a film or series.  

I know I’ve been pretty vague in this review, throwing nothing but superlatives, I don’t have much else to say about it.  A plot summary would go on forever and give away the drama.  Anything else I could say has already been said in the reviews of the first two books, Jade City and Jade War.  But this book gets five stars out of five because it all came gloriously together.  I’m so glad I read the first book in my World Fantasy Award challenge, otherwise, I may never have experienced this incredible ride.  

The Jasmine Throne

Tasha Suri
Completed 7/29/2023, Reviewed 7/29/2023
4 stars

Wow, another fantasy with a lot of politics and scheming which I actually loved.  This time, the story is set in an Indian-like culture.  The general plot is not that original, but the world-building, the characterization, and the prose are simply marvelous.  The politics, while fairly complex, were easy to follow.  There are a lot of characters, and the point of view jumps from chapter to chapter, but I had no trouble keeping track of who’s who and who was speaking.  And the magic system is breathtaking.  This book won the 2022 World Fantasy Award and was nominated for a few others.  Definitely worthy of the WFA despite a strong list of nominees.

Malini is a princess who was one of three women condemned to burn for traitorous activity against the emperor, her brother.  However, she refused to willingly climb the pyre.  The emperor exiles her to a ruined temple.  The temple was once the home of the deathless waters of one of the empire’s subjugated kingdoms.  Priya, a former child priestess of the temple and once born of the deathless waters who hides there as a maidservant, is assigned as the sole servant for Malini.  When Malini discovers Priya’s true nature, their destinies intertwine as Malini tries to escape and overthrow her despotic brother while Priya ties to push the empire out of her homeland.  Amidst the drama, a slow burning romance develops between the two women, but ultimately, their duties comes before pleasure.  

There are a lot of themes explored in this book, primarily the subjugation of women.  The despotic emperor fills his court with priests who believe in the burning of women as the original mothers voluntarily immolated themselves as sacrifices.  But for this emperor, it is pure sadism.  As a response, Malini tries to bring her eldest brother back to reclaim the throne, a claim he renounced when he became a monk of an alternative religion.  Malini’s captivity stands in her way.  She is governed by the vindictive mother of one of the other young women burned on the pyre, feeding Malini a drug that keeps her despondent, depressed, and eventually will kill her.  Priya is her only hope of escape.

Priya is a fantastic character, a strong but self-doubting woman with some gifts from having gone through the deathless water once.  Not a Mary Sue character at all, she must find the determination to help free Malini if there is any hope for freeing her own people.  I really liked Priya for her strength and determination, despite not always feeling up to the challenges she faces.

The third main character, Bhumika, is the wife of the emperor’s regent.  She is also a priestess of the temple and twice born of the deathless waters.  Her character comes into play when the action really begins. Through her, we, and Priya, learn just how powerful the gifts of the deathless waters are.  

I thought the world building was just phenomenal.  Based on Indian folklore, Suri creates a vivid world of power and decay.  The magic system is based on nature.  When the characters really start to use it, it’s pretty fantastic.  The prose is dreamy, but not over the top.  There’s a lot of well described action to keep the pace moving.  At over five hundred pages, this prose could have made this book a snore.  Instead everything was vivid and immediate, a real pleasure to read.

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s an excellent book that makes you anticipate the sequels.  The only thing that kept this book from being five stars is that, while really enjoying the main characters, I found I was never completely engrossed in them.  Perhaps it was because Priya and Malini kept their feelings for each other at bay for so long, I too felt an arm’s length from really connecting with them. But just about every other aspect of this book is top notch.  I’ve started so many trilogies lately, I don’t know when I’ll get to the second book of this one, but I probably will eventually.  Highly recommended.

A Deadly Education

Naomi Novik
Completed 7/22/2023, Reviewed 7/22/2023
3 stars

I think I usually like books about angsty teenagers, but it’s been a while since I’ve read one.  In this book, the teenager covers her angstiness with meanness.  That I don’t like.  Through most of this book, the main character is just plain mean.  And the story is told in first person.  It made me feel like the anger was directed at me, not just the other characters.  Towards the end, she makes a conscious effort to be less mean, which helped a bit.  The saving grace of this book was that the world building was terrific.  It’s not just your ordinary wizard school, not another Harry Potter rip-off.  It has a much more pragmatic, contemporary feel, as if it could really exist.

Galadriel, who prefers to be called “El,” is a junior at the Scholomance, a school for wizarding.  Her mother was lone wizard, not belonging to one of the many enclaves around the world.  El, as a result, has a disdain for the teens from the enclaves and as well as those who are trying to find a way into one.  The book opens with her being saved again from a monster (a mal) by one such teen, Orion.  The school is overrun by mals trying to eat the students and Orion seems to have a mission to protect as many students as he can.  El hates that fact that she has to be saved.  Thus starts a rocky relationship between the two of them as well as a few other loners, and of course the scads of mals overrunning the school.

Don’t be fooled though.  This is barely a teen romance.  It is a coming into one’s self and figuring out one’s place in the world.  El has been the petulant child for a long time.  At the Scholomance, she’s only ever looked out for herself, who seems to attract more mals than other students.  When she was young her grandmother divined a prophesy that El would bring about a reign of destruction.  So she has been shunned most her life.  Entrenched in self-sufficiency, she must now learn to survive by accepting help from other people.  

I spent most of this book not liking El.  At best, I pitied her.  That must have been Novik’s intent because I don’t see how anyone can like her.  Occasionally, her reflections and insights had some humorous bits, but it made my reading of this book a veritable slog.  At barely over 300 pages, it took me a long week to read this book.  I just didn’t want to be in El’s head that much.  

Fortunately, the school is another character in the book.  It’s crazy structure and format made for interesting reading.  What I found strange though was the purge of seniors at graduation.  It’s revealed to us early on that on graduation day, the seniors are gathered in a big hall which rotates down into the depths of the school where the mals wait to eat them.  The lucky ones escape; the unlucky ones, well, they don’t.  But apparently, this is better than going through your teen years out in the real world.  So the students basically study magic to build their repertoire enough to help them escape graduation, and develop enough of an arsenal of spells to make it through life after Scholomance.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  I was very disappointed in this book after thoroughly enjoying Novik’s previous two novels, Uprooted and Spinning Silver.  I did start to warm up to it at the end when El finally lightens up a bit and has to work with others to try to fix the apparatus that was supposed to keep the mal population at bay.  The world building and the ending helped keep this book from getting two stars.  

I got the whole Scholomance trilogy when the individual books were on big sales, so I’ll probably read the rest of them.  After all of El’s meanness, I saw some hope for her at the end and want to see what happens during her senior year and as she makes her way out into the real world.  I also want to see what more Novik can build into this world.  

Jade War

Fonda Lee
Completed 7/15/2023, Reviewed 7/15/2023
4 stars

Really impressed that the sophomore effort in this trilogy is nearly as excellent as the first, Jade City.  At about the same length, it took me a little longer to read this book because work had me so exhausted that I fell asleep a few nights after reading just a couple of pages.  I will admit that there were times where the action slowed while Lee brought the reader up to speed with what happened to all the characters since the end of the last book.  Those sections weren’t boring, just slow.  And some of the international politics slowed things down a bit, but again, it wasn’t a trudge.  This book was nominated for several lower profile awards, but I would say it should have gotten more than it did.  

This plot summary has spoilers for the first novel, so beware…

It’s been eighteen months since the end of the first book.  Hilo is now Pillar of the No Peak clan.  He has married his lover Wen.  Without his knowledge, she does some spy work for the clan.  Hilo’s sister Shae is Weather Man.  She has her hand in all the business and politicking.  And she has taken on a lover.  Anden, the gay adoptive brother is all but punished for his rejection of Jade and indoctrination as a Green Bone.  He has disrespected the family, but his conscience won’t allow him to become a Green Bone after killing a man in the clan wars.  So, Anden is sent to Espenia to study abroad, but also to feel out the situation for bringing clan business to the mainland.  The Mountain Clan is gaining power and influence on the island since the death of Hilo’s brother Lan.  However, there is a tentative peace between the clans after all the violence of the previous few years.  In the meantime, war is raging on the mainland, causing uncertainty in the Jade trade, both legal and illegal, and the international relationships of countries and businesses with the clans.

What really stuck out for me was how much Hilo had matured.  He was the Horn of the clan, basically the head of the clan’s “army”.  He was hot headed and vengeful.  In this book, he’s much more subdued.  He still has the same faults.  They are just tempered.  Some of that is attributable to having a wife and a growing family, making him a more responsible leader.  This can be shown by his decision to send Anden to the mainland rather than a complete exile.  

Another standout is Bero, the street urchin who killed Lan.  The book begins with Bero again, this time, he and his accomplice steal Lan’s Jade from the grave.  This causes an all-out manhunt by the No Peaks, but Bero is still slippery.  He has an incredible power of survival.  And while he doesn’t get equal page time the clan family, his seemingly impulsive actions steer the course of the war between the clans.

I was excited that Anden got more page time in this book.  After sulking for a while in Espenia, he ends up an active part of the Kekon community there and even gets a boyfriend.  However, Cory is the only son the Pillar of this part of Espenia.  So you can see what’s probably coming there.  Still, his character developed very well.  

Lastly, Wen, Hilo’s wife, also gets more character development and page time.  I liked her as well.  As the stone eye, that is, a person unaffected by proximity to Jade, she finds ways to help the clan, despite Hilo’s insistence that she does not put herself in danger.

I was never one for crime family dramas, like The Godfather or The Sopranos.  However, I am fully immersed in the Kaul family saga.  I can’t wait to read the last book in the series.  So much happens in this book, so many twists and turns, that it kept my interest once the setting was reestablished in the beginning.  The crazy politics was even interesting.  This series would not be my usual cup of tea, but I found it just amazing.  I could hardly put it down for the last hundred pages.  I give this book four stars out of five, knocking off one star only because it took a while to ramp up.