May 2022
Monthly Archive
May 31, 2022
May 30, 2022
This is one of the Wyrd and Wonder prompts
Pick a fantasy subgenre you love and share some of your favourite books within it. What makes this subgenre so beloved for you?
I love faeries/fairies and elves, no matter if they’re immortal or “just” long-lived. I love both mischievous and heroic faeries, especially when both kinds are in the same story. I even enjoy them as villains. Urban fantasy is usually set in modern times and I enjoy those faerie stories but I especially enjoy historical settings. I guess my fascination started with fairy tales when I was young and now I enjoy exploring different kinds of faeries.
Wendy and Richard Pini: Elfquest
This comic introduced me to down-to-earth elves, very different from Tolkien-type ethereal immortals. Cutter is the leader of a small tribe of elves, the Wolfriders. They live and hunt in a forest, avoiding humans. But when the humans burn down their Grove, they must leave. The comic is available both free online at https://elfquest.com/ and as printed graphic novels.
Marie Brennan: the Onyx Hall series
The first book in this four-book series is Midnight Never Come. This series is set in the Faerie Court the Onyx Hall which is built underneath London. Each book is set about a hundred years after the previous one, so the human cast changes, but most of the faeries stay the same. The first book is set in 1554 during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign.
Elizabeth Bear: the Promethean Age series
Another faeries series in (mostly) urban setting. This series has two duologies. The first is “Blood and Iron” and “Whiskey and Water” intertwining faeries, werewolves, vampires, Arthurian mythos, and fairy tales in the modern world. The other duology, “Ink and Steel” and “Hell and Earth“, is set in the Elizabethian age and both William Shakespeare and Christofer Marlowe/Kit Marley are the main characters along with Morgan LeFay. The single book (One-Eyed Jack) is set in modern Las Vegas and the main character is the personification of Las Vegas. This series has both the Seelie and the Unseelie Courts and many different kinds of faeries.
Genevieve Cogman: The Invisible Library
This eight-book series has a lot of my favorite things: fairies, dragons, parallel universes, and the main character is a Librarian and a spy. Irene Winters and her junior partner Kai face almost impossible odds at every turn. In this series, the faeries are creatures of chaos and storytelling. Each takes on an archetype from stories and must think and behave like the archetypal character.
Seanan McGuire: Toby Daye series
The first book is Rosemary and Rue. This modern urban fantasy series follows October, Toby, Daye’s adventures. She’s a half-blooded fae, a changeling, and a knight in service to Duke Sylvester. In the first book, Toby loses her human husband and daughter, so she’s depressed and stressed. Only the death of one of her few friends brings her back to the world of fae. This series just gets better with each book. While in the beginning, Toby is a loner her circle of friends grows slowly but surely. I love the eccentric characters!
May 28, 2022
HumbleBundle has four comics bundles:
Top Cow 30th anniversary. This bundle has Cyberforce, Sunstone, Rising Stars, Infinite Dark, Madame Mirage, and a lot of other Top Cow comics.
19 days to go
The Boys versus the Girls is a massive comics bundle. It has lots and lots of the Boys, an ironic take on superheroes (or rather villains pretending to be heroes). The other comics have women as main characters: Dejah Thoris, Swords of Sorrow, Vampirella, Red Sonja, Alice in Wonderland, Jennifer Blood, Miss Fury, and lots of others.
47 days to go
Super massive Heavy Metal: “Explore 45 years of groundbreaking graphic fiction ripped from the pages of Heavy Metal, the “World’s Greatest Illustrated Magazine”! Witness comic history in the making with the 1977 premiere issue, featuring stories from legends like Jean “Moebius” Giraud. Discover the cosmic saga of Taarna, the iconic heroine from the animated film. Read recent issues & modern collections of Heavy Metal sci-fi, fantasy, and horror tales from genre masters, and support Comic Book Legal Defense Fund with your purchase!”
7 days to go
Transformers: the Final Phase: “Journey from heart of Cybertron to the edge of the universe in IDW’s legendary Transformers comic saga! Discover climactic battles and galaxy-shattering revelations in the pages of More Than Meets the Eye, Optimus Prime, Lost Light, and more digital volumes from the saga’s final years. Explore the end of an incredible era for Transformers storytelling, and help support Hasbro Children’s Fund with your purchase!”
5 days to go.
May 25, 2022
The first book in the fantasy series the Book of Dust.
Publishing year: 2017
Format: Print
Finnish publisher: Otava
Page count: 687
Finnish translator: Helene Butzow
This series is a prequel to the His Dark Materials series.
Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead’s parents run an inn called the Trout in Oxford. He’s a studious boy who likes to help people both in the inn and out of it. He’s also very observant. When three strange men come to the inn and ask Malcolm about a baby who is in the care of the local nunnery, he thinks it’s very strange. He hasn’t heard about it and tells them so. Later, when he’s on the Thames in his canoe, La Belle Sauvage, he sees a man looking for something. His daemon Asta thinks she saw where the man dropped the item. But before they can help the man, he’s arrested. Malcolm and Asta go and retrieve the item: a wooden acorn. They manage to open it and find inside a secret message. But they don’t know where to take it, so they keep it.
Later, when Malcolm goes to the monastery, he asks about a baby and much to his surprise, a nun tells him that they are caring for a baby. She’s called Lyra and nobody is supposed to know that she’s there.
The first half of the book is building tension when Malcolm slowly realizes the depth of the secrets he has stumbled upon. We also get to know Dr. Hannah Relf who interprets the alethiometer at Oxford University. She’s also part of a conspiracy against the Magisterium, the religious organization that wants to control the world. We also meet some other conspirators. When the action starts to roll in the second half of the book, everything is in place. Well, mostly. The second half has scenes and magic that felt very random to me and they weren’t explained. Also, compared to the first half where the only magic are the daimons, the second part seems disjointed. Also, the main bad guy, Bonneville, seemed very strange.
Malcolm can feel quite a passive character who only reacts to events, but he’s just 11 and doesn’t know much about the larger plots. This can frustrate readers who are expecting a more Lyra-like main character. For the first half, Malcolm runs errands, spies for Hannah, and just talks with people building tension for the rest of the book and series.
It’s been a couple of decades since I read His Dark Materials series but I recently watched the first season of the TV show so I remember it well. I loved the daemons, again. Malcolm’s Asta still changes form at will and the adults have stable daimons who reveal a lot about their personality.
Some characters from the previous series appear. However, we already know what happens to Lyra so there’s no tension about what ultimately happens to her. Of course, I don’t read books to find out how the main characters will die, so this didn’t really bother me. Overall, I enjoyed this book and it’s a fine beginning to a new series. I just hope Pullman has some explanation for the random things that happened.
May 24, 2022
This is one of the Wyrd & Wonder prompts.
Time to celebrate shorter reads – what are your favorite fantasy zines, anthologies, individual short stories, novelettes, or novellas?
I like short stories and novellas. It was difficult to choose just five but here goes.
1, Lois McMaster Bujold: Penric’s Demon
The first story in the Penric & Desdemona fantasy series. Penric is the younger son of a minor lord. He wants to study but the family can’t afford it. He’s studious, curious, generous, and kind. When the family finds him a marriage match with the daughter of a cheese merchant, he agrees to it and while he doesn’t love his bride, he can easily imagine that he will in time. However, on the way to the betrothal party, he meets a group of people: a couple of servants and an old woman clearly in distress. He offers to help the woman and receives more than he ever imagines: a demon.
In this world, demons are intelligent creatures but they don’t have bodies. Instead, they have to take over another body, animal or human. They’re also not evil but have, of course, very different experiences from any human which means that humans don’t necessarily understand them or their reactions. Also, if the host has a weak will, the demon can take over completely. Penric has no knowledge of demons or how to control them, so he has to learn it all from scratch. But he’s curious and willing to learn. This particular demon is about 200 years old but her most recent hosts have been Temple sorceresses, so she knows not to try to wrestle for control.
Penric and his demon are a delightful pair. I’ve enjoyed the series a lot.
2, Kristine Kathryn Rusch: The Scottish Play
Porchia is one of three sisters and three witches. Their family tree of witches can be traced back to several centuries, only their methods have changed. Her job is to get rid of curses and other magic in theaters. Because acting, and writing, can produce magic, they can also produce curses so she and her two sisters are in high demand. However, something goes terribly wrong in the Lancaster theater where their mother is working on a curse and is killed.
3, Phyllis Irene Radford and Laura Anne Gilman, ed: The Shadow Conspiracy
In this short story collection, the short stories affect each other and the setting. In the first story the main character, Mary Shelley, (yes, she who wrote the Frankenstein) finds out about new science that she thinks is abdominal: it can transfer a human soul to another body. We get to see the consequences of this science in the other stories. Another scientific achievement is done by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace; they create machines in the shapes of men. The metal men become more and more common, and are programmed for more and more varied tasks.
Apparently, it’s now only available as an audiobook.
4, Nancy Jane Moore: A Mere Scutcheon
It’s set in a world similar to the Three Musketeers, except that a woman’s honor is the same as a man’s, and not between her legs. The Queen has her guardswomen and the King his guardsmen, and they are often dueling each other. The Queen gives Anna D’Gart a mission: to get back the Queen’s necklace before the ball where the Queen is expected to wear the necklace. Anna and her loyal friend Asamir set out to retrieve it. Asamir is aiming to become a nun but not before she has lots of intimate meetings with a married count.
5, JY Yang: Bridge of Crows
A hauntingly beautiful tale told in a format of a story inside a story. The unnamed narrator tells the tale of a young woman who is walking through a barren land on a desperate quest. From “The Mythic Dream” short story collection.
May 22, 2022
A Penric and Desdemona fantasy novella.
Publication year: 2020
Publisher: Spectrum Literary Agency
Format: ebook
Page count from Goodreads: 126
Penric is enjoying domestic bliss with his wife, newborn daughter, and mother-in-law. Penric’s demon Desdemona and his wife have managed to settle into an amicable relationship. Des is a 200-year-old chaos demon inhabiting Pen, so not every woman could have done it.
Then Pen’s wife’s brother, General Arisaydia asks for Pen’s help. A mysterious disease has attacked his men, a bruising fever. Pen agrees to look things over but is promptly lured into trying to cure it and find out where it came from. Because he doesn’t know how it spreads, he can’t return home or he could accidentally infect his family. Des can’t just cure the sick; she can only assist their own healing and that takes days or weeks. Pen desperately wants to cure everyone but one sorcerer isn’t nearly enough, especially when there are sick people not just in the military fort but in surrounding towns.
Pen is a scholar delighting in reading, translation, and writing. While he can use his demon to speed healing, he isn’t a healer or a physician, not anymore. This story reminds us why. Because only the most difficult cases are brought to him and he will break himself trying to help them. So, this story had definitely a darker side. Fortunately, it also has others, especially after the halfway point. I very much enjoyed the character introduced later in the story but won’t spoil them.
Des doesn’t get a chance to snark much, this time. Two of her previous hosts were healers so she knows all too well how spirit-breaking the work can be. Also, some people are too scared of Pen to let him try to help while others expect him to wave a hand and cure everyone. When he can’t do that, these people blame him. So, the tone isn’t as cozy and cheerful as in some of the others.
Still, a good read, but probably not the best place to start the Pen&Des series.
May 18, 2022
Storybundle has two very interesting bundles:
Twisted Fairytales: “Fairytales are near and dear to my heart – but TWISTED tales are even better! As a reader, I love it when authors take the old and familiar and fold it into strange new shapes, flipping the roles of hero and villain, adding unexpected romance, and blending together strands of different classic stories to make something altogether new and enthralling. So when I had the opportunity to curate this collection, I leaped on it like a starving grandma on a poor innocent wolf…
In this StoryBundle you’ll find eleven thrilling twists on Cinderella, Beauty & the Beast, Rumpelstiltskin, Alice in Wonderland, Mulan, and more, from award-winning and New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors, which includes an anthology packed with eerie retellings of your favorite tales.”
22 days to go.
And 200 Sci-Fi Worlds: “We’ve included fifteen sci-fi anthologies and collections showcasing 139 authors and more than 200 individual stories, but it’s available for a limited time only! This StoryBundle features a wide variety of themes – fighting climate change, exploring the far reaches of the galaxy, future crime, hopepunk, sci-fi zombies, space marines, exosapiens, LGBTQ+ heroes, and so much more. With 139 authors, chances are that you’ll find some new writers to love.”
8 days to go.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a starter kit of ten of her series at Kickstarter.
The stories include:
- “The Santa Series (fantasy holiday romance)… Up on the Rooftop (novella)
- The Whale Rock Series (Seavy County) (dark fantasy)…The Women of Whale Rock (short story)
- The Sweet Young Things Series (hard-boiled mystery, crime)…Sweet Young Things (short story)
- The Fates Universe (fantasy romance)…Simply Irresistible (novel)
- The Faerie Justice Series (dark historical fantasy)…Dark Corners (short story)
- Spade/Paladin Series (mystery, private detective at sf conventions)…Stomping Mad (short story)
- The Smokey Dalton Series (historical mystery, private detective)…A Dangerous Road (novel)
- The Fey Series (epic fantasy)…The Sacrifice (novel)
- The Retrieval Artist Series (sf thriller, space opera)…The Disappeared (novel)
- The Diving Series (space opera, military sf)… Diving into the Wreck (novel)”
It’s already funded and reached two stretch goals, so everyone will get also Killer advice (an SF novella) and the Scottish Play (a fantasy novella). For writers, the pledges include two very interesting writing workshops.
9 days to go.
May 17, 2022
The second book in the Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club.
Publication year: 2018
Format: Audio
Running time: 24 hours, 27 minutes
Narrator: Kate Reading
The members of the Athena Club are all young women who have suffered because of their fathers’ scientific experiments. Mary Jekyll and Diana Hyde are half-sisters, and their father is the infamous Dr. Jekyll/Mr.Hyde. Catherine Moreau was fashioned from a panther by Dr. Moreau. Justine Frankenstein was the female monster that the famous doctor created. Giacomo Rappaccini exposed his daughter Beatrice to poisons, so she can’t even touch other humans without poisoning them. Now, they all live together in the same house as best friends, who bicker a lot.
Their fathers (creators) were all members of the Alchemical Society. Now it seems that the Society is again experimenting on young girls. Mary’s former governess, Miss Mina Murray, sends a telegram to Mary that Lucinda Van Helsing has been kidnapped and Miss Murray asks for the Club’s help in finding her. Mary and the others agree, even though it means traveling to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, they all can’t afford to go, so Mary and Justine decide to take the trip. Of course, it’s difficult for women to travel alone and Justine is very tall for a woman so she poses as Mary’s brother. And before they can even cross the channel, they realize that 14-year-old Diana has disguised herself as a boy and followed them. They have no choice but to allow her to come with them. Meanwhile, Beatrice and Catherine have adventures of their own in England.
This book is mostly a road trip. Mary, Diana, and Justine travel all over Europe in carriages and trains, with Diana complaining about boredom and hunger. The writing style is similar to the first, meaning that the characters interrupt the story constantly with their complaints and opinions. This is fun at first, but adds a lot of pages to the book and robs all tension, just as happened in the first book.
This time, too, we meet famous literary characters (Sherlock Holmes and Watson make a brief appearance and Irene Norton (Adler) becomes the women’s ally) as well as more obscure characters. Since Van Helsing is involved, the reader can guess early on what sort of monsters and monstrous women the characters face. This was one of my frustrations with the book. Because I knew what they were facing, the characters felt very dense at times. The other frustration was with the constant interruptions and in an audiobook I can’t skip over them. Also, lots of unnecessary details. But if you can overlook these things, this is a delightful book.
I love the characters. Their personalities play off each other very well. I also love the idea of taking minor female characters and giving them their own voice and empowerment. The Alchemical Society is also a great idea and we get to know a lot more about it.
The main story is wrapped up, but the final chapter ends with a huge cliffhanger and there’s a continuing subplot about Holmes and Watson. So I dived right into the next book.
May 16, 2022
Today Wyrd & Wonder prompt is current read.
As usual, I have three current reads:
In print:
It’s the first book in his new fantasy series The Book of Dust. It returns to the His Dark Materials universe, but before that series.
In audio:
It’s the third book in the Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club. I just finished the second book yesterday and had to dive into the next book.
Ebook:
It’s the next novella in the Penric and Desdemona series. Again, I really enjoyed the previous story and ended up starting the next right away.
May 14, 2022
A Penric and Desdemona fantasy novella.
Publication year: 2019
Publisher: Spectrum Literary Agency
Format: ebook
Page count from Goodreads: 127
The novella is set about a year after the events of “The Prisoner of Limnos”. Learned Penric and his demon Desdemona have been together for thirteen years, so they know each other very well. Now, they’re on a ship headed back home. But pirates attack the ship and take it. Penric strongly suspects that they are Quadrene, people who worship only four gods and consider the fifth one, the Bastard, a more powerful demon. Penric is a divine, a priest, of the Bastard. Also, if the Quadrenes know that Penric has a demon inside him, they would kill him. So, he pretends to be a humble scholar.
The pirates throw him into a filthy hold with two small children they’ve captured from a previous ship. The sisters are terrified. Penric realizes that he is the answer to their prayers and it’s his duty to protect them.
This was a fun, quick read, as the Pen and Des novellas tend to be. There’s no character development, though, so it’s lighter than the others. Also, it has darker undertones because the pirates in this story aren’t romanticized. They’re murderers, rapists, and slavers. The sisters’ fate would be awful without Pen. Otherwise, this was a fun adventure, even though the ending was quite convenient.
Penric is his kind, thoughtful self, and a delightful POV character. Desdemona is just as delightful, but their interaction is far more practiced here than in the first stories (of course). No surprises. This is a good, light read for fans of the series. But I recommend starting with the first, Penric’s Demon.
Next Page »
Mervi's Book reviews 