Book Review – Becoming Crone

This book was suggested for one of my book clubs and is another one that I read last year. Becoming Crone by Lydia M. Hawke is book 1 in The Crone Wars series (paid links).

I’m not going to have any other posts this week because I’m traveling to Salt Lake City for a fencing tournament and then some outdoor exploration. Look for my April reading update on either 4/29 or 4/30 to find out how many books I finished on both 4-hour flights!

I read this as an e-book.

Here is the blurb:

She wanted purpose. She found dark magick and war.

For Claire Emerson, there is nothing ordinary about turning sixty.

First, there are the crows. Then, a pendant that unlocks a gate to a house in the woods–which comes with a snarky gargoyle, an entirely too-sexy wolf shifter claiming to be Claire’s protector, and a legacy that turns her reality upside down.

Because divorced, menopausal grandmothers with creaky hips and hot flashes? They don’t just randomly discover they’re next in a long line of powerful women protecting the world from the dark magick of Mages.

Claire’s first instinct is to turn tail and run back to the safety of baking cookies and reading bedtime stories. But when it becomes clear the Mages have targeted her, she may have no choice but to accept her calling. There’s just one problem: she never got the lifetime of training she was supposed to have, and her magick is… well, unreliable would be an understatement.

With the Mages threatening everything she loves, can Claire learn what she needs to in time to become Crone? Or will she be the one to lose an ancient war—and her life?

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The premise of this book was fun, with our heroine being a grandmother with a wealth of world experience, rather than the younger protagonist more common in genre fiction. This isn’t the first time I’ve come across an older hero though. The most memorable example that I have is the first book I read by one of my favorite authors: The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold (paid link).

In any case, this book was easy to read and follows some standard tropes. I felt bad for Claire because I think she had a very sheltered life prior to the events in this book. In some sense, she is also experiencing a “coming of age” tale like what is often encountered in stories about those younger protagonists.

The story was fun and kept me interested. I don’t know if I’ll read the other books in this series, but I did enjoy this one. I also really liked the cover artwork.

Have you read any stories that feature an older protagonist? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – Elder Race

Elder Race is a short novel (or novella) and was the first fiction by Adrian Tchaikovsky that I have read (paid link). It was nominated for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Read on below to see what I thought.

I read the e-book edition.

Here is the blurb:

In Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…

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This story is told through alternating perspectives, switching between Nyr, a depressed anthropologist, and Lynesse, a princess looking to prove herself. It is the tale of a lost colony of Earth, and Nyr’s failed mission to study the people there. At the core of the story is the juxtaposition between Nyr’s science fictional view of the world and Lynesse’s fantastical view of technology that she has no way to understand. The story’s genre depends on which perspective we take.

In the end, it is a work of science fiction, but one that encompasses the difficulty in determining genre in some stories. My favorite example of this is Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, in which McCaffrey always presented the stories as science fiction (paid link). However, in my own reading of those books, they always felt like fantasy, since the specifics of the technology don’t matter until the books at the end of the timeline.

In Elder Race, another aspect that surprised me was how the story depicted Nyr’s mental health challenges. He uses his technology to suppress the effects of depression for a time, but he also knows that this is not a solution for his condition. We see a lot of heroes that either ignore their trauma and do what needs to be done or experience intense emotion without suffering more specifically. In this story, Nyr can only put the effects off for so long, and this adds a unique factor to this tale.

I rated this book as one of my top reads for 2023 and put another series by this author on my to-be-read list. Have you read anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – How High We Go In the Dark

I don’t remember where I came across this book, but it ended up being a selection for one of my book clubs last year. How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a novel told through interconnected short stories (paid link). Read on below to see what I thought.

I read this as an e-book.

Here is the blurb:

A debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters over hundreds of years as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague.

Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.

Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy. In a theme park designed for terminally ill children, a cynical employee falls in love with a mother desperate to hold on to her infected son. A heartbroken scientist searching for a cure finds a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects—a pig—develops the capacity for human speech. A widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter embark on a cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.

From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead to interstellar starships, Sequoia Nagamatsu takes readers on a journey spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resiliency of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us all together in the universe.

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This book drew fairly polarized responses from the book club. I did enjoy it, but I could see how it is not for everyone. This book starts out at the beginning of a pandemic and ultimately is about how we deal with death.

Being someone who deals with life and death situations and humane euthanasia every day as a veterinarian, I found that the situations in this book took a thoughtful look at death and grief, but in ways that went beyond our current cultural norms. My favorite example of this is an amusement park for terminally ill children. Their parents bring them to the park to enjoy all the thrills and excitement, and then for the last ride of the day, they embark on a rollercoaster that breaks their necks to end their suffering. The parents know the purpose of the park, but the children don’t.

The disease that results from the pandemic was also fascinating to me. It caused the organs of those afflicted with it to slowly change to a different organ. At one point it only affected children, then later on it spreads to everyone. This book isn’t about the science behind the virus or the epidemiology of the pandemic, but rather follows how society changes as a result.

This is also a science fiction tale that takes some odd tangents into a possible afterlife and interstellar travel, although those aren’t exactly the main plot. Overall, I thought that How High We Go in the Dark brought a unique perspective to how we think about preparations for and rituals about the end of life.

Have you read any of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s short stories? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – Dragonfly in Amber

I did manage to finish the second book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon last week, Dragonfly in Amber. Hopefully this means that I’m on the way out of my March reading slump (paid links). This was also the audiobook version, narrated by Davina Porter.

You can find my review of book 1, Outlander, at this link.

I listened to the audiobook edition of this.

Here is the blurb:

From the author of Outlander… a magnificent epic that once again sweeps us back in time to the drama and passion of 18th-century Scotland…

For twenty years Claire Randall has kept her secrets. But now she is returning with her grown daughter to Scotland’s majestic mist-shrouded hills. Here Claire plans to reveal a truth as stunning as the events that gave it birth: about the mystery of an ancient circle of standing stones …about a love that transcends the boundaries of time …and about James Fraser, a Scottish warrior whose gallantry once drew a young Claire from the security of her century to the dangers of his ….

Now a legacy of blood and desire will test her beautiful copper-haired daughter, Brianna, as Claire’s spellbinding journey of self-discovery continues in the intrigue-ridden Paris court of Charles Stuart …in a race to thwart a doomed Highlands uprising …and in a desperate fight to save both the child and the man she loves….

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The beginning of this book was not what I expected and introduced more time travel complications to the overarching storyline. It also framed the theme of this book – can the past be changed if one has foreknowledge of their outcome? Or is one helpless, pinned in place like the titular dragonfly? I won’t answer that question because you’ll have to read the book to find out.

This volume takes Claire and Jaime to France for most of the book. There, they use family connections and a little spycraft to try to stop the eventual uprising of the Scots against England that Claire knows is doomed to failure.

Claire and Jaime’s relationship evolves as they are faced with new challenges. I have to wonder how many different ways the author can pull them apart, have them question their love, and then have them reunite and reconcile. So far I don’t think she’s had a similar situation between them come up twice, but there are a lot of books to go.

The same narrator gave voice to this book, and I really like her portrayal of the characters. I wish that the books included a glossary or dramatis personae because sometimes I get the more minor Scots confused.

I don’t want to give any specific spoilers here, but I think that the ending of this volume was stronger than book 1. It provides enough resolution, but also sets up more mystery and tension about what happens next. I have already started the next book, Voyagers, which is almost 44 hours long, so look for my review of that one in about 6 weeks (paid link).

Have you read any of the Outlander books? How do the first two books compare to you? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my book reviews here.

Book Review – Upgrade

I read Upgrade by Blake Crouch sometime last year. This is the second book by the author that I’ve read, with the first being another stand-alone novel, Dark Matter (paid links). You can find my review of that book here.

I read this book in e-book format.

Here is the blurb:

At first, Logan Ramsay isn’t sure if anything’s different. He just feels a little . . . sharper. Better able to concentrate. Better at multitasking. Reading a bit faster, memorizing better, needing less sleep.

But before long, he can’t deny it: Something’s happening to his brain. To his body. He’s starting to see the world, and those around him—even those he loves most—in whole new ways.

The truth is, Logan’s genome has been hacked. And there’s a reason he’s been targeted for this upgrade. A reason that goes back decades to the darkest part of his past, and a horrific family legacy.

Worse still, what’s happening to him is just the first step in a much larger plan, one that will inflict the same changes on humanity at large—at a terrifying cost.

Because of his new abilities, Logan’s the one person in the world capable of stopping what’s been set in motion. But to have a chance at winning this war, he’ll have to become something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human.

And even as he’s fighting, he can’t help wondering: what if humanity’s only hope for a future really does lie in engineering our own evolution?

Intimate in scale yet epic in scope, Upgrade is an intricately plotted, lightning-fast tale that charts one man’s thrilling transformation, even as it asks us to ponder the limits of our humanity—and our boundless potential.

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This book looked at the consequences of rapid advancement in genetic modification and created a fast-paced story with plenty of action. At the same time, Logan had to examine his own humanity and come to terms with his family’s dark past. It took me some time to get invested in the story, but once I pushed through the first few chapters, I couldn’t put it down.

The plot almost moved too fast at times, leaving me less time to think about the implications of the technology depicted in this story. But it was still a rush to read and I’m going to look out for more books by this author. This one was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award in 2022.

Have you read any science fiction that looked at the consequences of genetic engineering? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – The Skull Throne

The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett is the fourth book of five in The Demon Cycle series. I have been meaning to finish this series and I’m not sure why I kept putting it off, since I’ve enjoyed the earlier books.

You can read my review of The Daylight War (book 3) at this link here. I did not formally review The Warded Man (book 1) or The Desert Spear (book 2) on this blog (paid links).

I read the mass market paperback edition.

Here is the blurb:

The Skull Throne of Krasia stands empty.

Built from the skulls of fallen generals and demon princes, it is a seat of honor and ancient, powerful magic, keeping the demon corelings at bay. From atop the throne, Ahmann Jardir was meant to conquer the known world, forging its isolated peoples into a unified army to rise up and end the demon war once and for all.

But Arlen Bales, the Warded Man, stood against this course, challenging Jardir to a duel he could not in honor refuse. Rather than risk defeat, Arlen cast them both from a precipice, leaving the world without a savior, and opening a struggle for succession that threatens to tear the Free Cities of Thesa apart.

In the south, Inevera, Jardir’s first wife, must find a way to keep their sons from killing each other and plunging their people into civil war as they strive for glory enough to make a claim on the throne.

In the north, Leesha Paper and Rojer Inn struggle to forge an alliance between the duchies of Angiers and Miln against the Krasians before it is too late.

Caught in the crossfire is the duchy of Lakton–rich and unprotected, ripe for conquest.

All the while, the corelings have been growing stronger, and without Arlen and Jardir there may be none strong enough to stop them. Only Renna Bales may know more about the fate of the missing men, but she, too, has disappeared…

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This is not a series that you can jump into at any point. The action in this book picks up immediately after the events of the previous volume, with no time spent rehashing the storyline. The questions brought up by the cliffhanger ending of book 3 are quickly answered, although there isn’t an immediate resolution to the situation.

The plot in this story follows our ongoing collection of main characters, with much of the action centered in the Hollow and the nearby lands of Everam’s Bounty, Lakton, and Angiers. The author jumps through multiple point-of-view characters to tell the story, but focuses in the right parts of the story so that the pacing never slows too much. He manages to have me simultaneously cheering for characters on opposing sides, even when the situation is dire.

I stayed up most of the night reading the last 200 pages of this book. The tension and the impending sense of doom built so much that I couldn’t stop myself. Although be warned, this was the most heartbreaking part of the series so far and approached a “red wedding” level of devastation.

I’ve already started the final book, The Core, so that I can discover if there will finally be a Deliverer who can end the demon threat (paid link).

The new editions of this series have rather boring covers. I prefer the ones that I’ve used here, where each book features one of the main characters on the front. The mass market paperback edition of The Skull Throne also featured a glossary and a family tree for some of the Krasians at the back, both of which were very helpful.

Have you read any of The Demon Cycle? Who do you think will be the Deliverer? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.

Book Review – The Foxglove King

I picked up The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten at an early-release signing at New York Comic-Con in 2022. This is the first book in The Nightshade Crown series from Orbit books. Read on below to see what I thought (paid links).

I read a paperback ARC of this book.

Here is the blurb:

When Lore was thirteen, she escaped a cult in the catacombs beneath the city of Dellaire. And in the ten years since, she’s lived by one rule: don’t let them find you. Easier said than done, when her death magic ties her to the city.

Mortem, the magic born from death, is a high-priced and illicit commodity in Dellaire, and Lore’s job running poisons keeps her in food, shelter, and relative security. But when a run goes wrong and Lore’s power is revealed, she’s taken by the Presque Mort, a group of warrior-monks sanctioned to use Mortem working for the Sainted King. Lore fully expects a pyre, but King August has a different plan. Entire villages on the outskirts of the country have been dying overnight, seemingly at random. Lore can either use her magic to find out what’s happening and who in the King’s court is responsible, or die.

Lore is thrust into the Sainted King’s glittering court, where no one can be believed and even fewer can be trusted. Guarded by Gabriel, a duke-turned-monk, and continually running up against Bastian, August’s ne’er-do-well heir, Lore tangles in politics, religion, and forbidden romance as she attempts to navigate a debauched and opulent society.

But the life she left behind in the catacombs is catching up with her. And even as Lore makes her way through the Sainted court above, they might be drawing closer than she thinks.

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I’m sad that I hadn’t read this book sooner because it featured a fascinating female protagonist, creative world-building, political intrigues, and plenty of romantic tension. Even though the plot does fall prey to some cliches, it all comes together for a great read.

We know that Lore is special from the outset, so in some ways this is a standard hero’s journey tale. She gets into trouble and is forced to spy on the court, putting her immediately into the way of courtiers, a prince, and a king. Her partner in this mission is a celibate monk who is one of the best characters in the book as he struggles with divided loyalties to his religion, his nation, and Lore, who might become more than a friend.

The magic in this world was based on the mythology of fallen gods and the two who remained to rule over life and death. Some people also take poison like a drug to extend their lives (albeit at a price). I love stories where magic is immersed in the foundations of the world, so this was exactly the type of tale I gravitate toward. I stayed up all night reading the last ~200 pages of the book because I couldn’t put it down.

The next book in the series, The Hemlock Queen, comes out on April 9, and will be on its way to me soon (paid link).

Have you read any of Hannah Whitten’s books? She has also written The Wilderwood series that is on my to-be-read list (paid link). Let me know in the comments (above).

Read more of my reviews here.

Reading for the Nebulas

I recently received my ballot information for this year’s Nebula Awards and thought that I might be able to spend some time reading the nominated works. However, when I looked at the deadline and how much I would need to read, I don’t think I’ll be able to get through enough of them to make any fair decisions.

These are the novels that have been nominated.

Prior to the announcement, I had only read one of the novels and none of the works in the other categories. . I reviewed The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz recently and you can find my thoughts here (paid link). That leaves me with five novels and all the novellas, novelettes, and short stories to read (and that is without counting the award for Middle Grade and Young Adult fiction or the game writing category).

I think that my strategy will be to start with the short stories. Then I can move on to the longer categories. I don’t expect that I will get to the novels, but the process at least makes me more aware of some books that I hadn’t heard of prior to this.

You can find all of the nominations here. Voting closes on April 15th and the winners will be announced on June 8th at the 2024 Nebula Conference in Pasadena, CA.

March 2024 Reading Wrap-Up

Help, help! I’m in a reading slump!

March wasn’t a very good month for me in terms of reading. I was distracted by other things in my life and I didn’t have as much time to devote to books, unfortunately. What did I actually finish reading in March? Just these two books:

I did review The Combat Codes by Alexander Darwin here. And I should have a review of The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten up soon (paid links).

I am still in the process of reading a few others which you can see here:

I didn’t make any further progress on The Anatomy of Story by John Truby, but I still plan to get back to this one. My audiobook listening habit also struggled, so I haven’t finished the second book in the Outlander series, Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon. As of the time I’m writing this, I have a little under seven hours left to go. I started reading the Utopia Science Fiction anthology last week, but I was not in the right mood to read short stories and ended up finally starting The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett, which is book 4 in The Demon Cycle (paid links).

What’s ahead for April? And how do I break out of my reading slump?

I rearranged what I originally had on my April list, since I didn’t get to most of what I had planned to read for March. Here are the books that I now have on for this month:

I put them roughly in the order I think I might read them. The Core is the fifth and final book in The Demon Cycle, so I expect I’ll want to finish that series once I get through book 4. I think I’ll probably get back to The Sandman series of graphic novels for a quick read and then move on to book 5 of The Wheel of Time – The Fires of Heaven. I expect Iron Flame to be a quick read, and after that I don’t know if I’ll actually get to the other books during April. I should be able to at least start Voyager, the 3rd book in the Outlander series, but since each one is longer than the last, I don’t know if I’ll finish it this month (paid links).

On top of those goals, I have been debating whether I should read some of the fiction nominated for the Nebula Awards. That will be the topic of a post later this week, so I’ll leave my thoughts on that until then.

As far as getting over my reading slump, that’s hard because I do have some travel plans this month. One trip involves a long flight, so that usually gives me some free time to read, but otherwise the logistics of packing and planning always takes time.

What are you reading in April? How are your reading goals for the year going so far? Let me know in the comments (above).

Book Review – Sunshine by Robin McKinley

I read Sunshine by Robin McKinley a few months ago after it was a pick for one of my book clubs. I had previously read and loved a couple of books by this author (The Blue Sword, The Outlaws of Sherwood) a few decades ago, so I was happy to get back to this stand-alone vampire novel (paid links). Read on to see what I thought.

I read the e-book edition.

Here is the blurb:

There are places in the world where darkness rules, where it’s unwise to walk. Sunshine knew that. But there hadn’t been any trouble out at the lake for years, and she needed a place to be alone for a while.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone. She never heard them coming. Of course you don’t, when they’re vampires.

They took her clothes and sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. And they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion – within easy reach of a figure stirring in the moonlight.

She knows that he is a vampire. She knows that she’s to be his dinner, and that when he is finished with her, she will be dead. Yet, as dawn breaks, she finds that he has not attempted to harm her. And now it is he who needs her to help him survive the day…

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This was a good read, although it wasn’t what I expected. Sunshine is set in an alternate semi-post-apocalyptic fantasy world, after humans have engaged in a war against vampires and other supernatural beings. It features just enough other magic to know that you cannot make any assumptions about how things work here.

Sunshine, the protagonist, is content in her role as a baker at the local shop. She rents a room in a house nearby and has a long-term boyfriend. But her comfortable place in the world is shaken when she takes up the unlikely acquaintance of a vampire, Constantine, imprisoned alongside her by his rivals. Sunshine has her own power and helps Constantine, sparking a forbidden relationship between them.

As Sunshine tries to hide her obsession with the vampire, his enemies stalk the town. One of my favorite characters was Sunshine’s landlady, since she turned out to be a lot more than she seemed. The final outcome was left a bit too vague for me, but I suppose that leaves it up to my interpretation. The world that the author sets up in this book was so interesting that I wish she’d write more in this setting, even if it doesn’t follow Sunshine and Constantine.

What other vampire fiction have you read? Let me know in the comments (above).

Find more of my reviews here.