Mervi's Book reviews

A fairy tale retelling novella.

Format: Audio

Length: 3 hours 43 minutes

Publisher: TOR

Publication year: 2023

Narrated by:Jennifer Blom

Toadling is a small fairy who guards the castle which is inside a huge nest of throns. She’s just a little fairy with very limited magic so mostly she just watches humans come and go. She’s not sure if she has a soul; the priest said that she doesn’t. But she still prays that nobody will go inside the tower and wake the sleeper. She has been doing it for a long time.

One day, a Saracen knight Halim camps near the thorns. He speaks to the fairy and she answers, startled. She knows that she shouldn’t say anything but she hasn’t spoken to anyone in a very long time and the temptation is too much. The knight has heard a tale about the sleeping maiden in the castle and is determined to break her curse. Toadling is horrified and tries to stop him.

This was a gentle retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. I loved it. As Kingfisher tends to do, she’s put in a couple of twists I didn’t see coming. I won’t spoil them here.

I really enjoyed both Toadling and the Halim. Toadling has been alone for a long time and is desperate for company. At the same time, she’s paying for a mistake in her past and guarding the castle. She’s kind and endearing. Halim is also a kind person. Even though he’s a knight, he’s not brash or arrogant. He wants to learn and is eager to learn even from a small fairy. While lots of fairy tales make a point of describing the characters are beautiful or handsome, here Toadling is plain or even ugly.

However, there are some problems with how Sleeping Beauty is portrayed. Still, it didn’t bother me while I was listening to it.

A wonderful, lush fantasy tale.

Top 5 Wednesday is a GoodReads group where people discuss a different bookish topic each week.

This week’s topic is favorite or best healers. Healers are often side characters unless the story is set in a hospital. Indeed, in comics a doctor often appears just to heal someone. However, loner heroes often need a caretaker who reminds them to eat and sleep in addition to patching them up after a fight. These are some of my favorite caretaker characters.

1, Maid Marian

In many retellings of the Robin Hood mythos, Maid Marian and Friar Tuck take the caretaker roles.

2, Mender from Elfquest

The Elfquest comic has a couple of remarkable caretakers: the healer Leetah and the gentle plant-shaper Redlance. But I just adore younger Mender whose magical talent is healing but he’s also a warrior. And he’s very charming, too.

3, Alfred from Batman

When Batman gets hurt, his butler Alfred Pennyworth nurtures him back to health. Alfred also tries to make sure that Batman eats and sleeps enough and doesn’t skip all of his social engagements.

4, Penric by Lois McMaster Bujold

Penric was already a gentle soul when he bonded with the demon Desdemona. So, Penric already wants to help people and solve their problems. With Des he can also heal people, although with difficulty.

5, Aragorn by J. R. R. Tolkien

Aragorn is the son of kings so he can use the herb Athelas to heal people. Others consider it just a weed.

A thriller novella and the beginning of Leo Keane thriller series.

Publishing year: 2020

Format: ebook

Wordcount from GoodReads: 138

Omar and his wife Nafisa are refugees from Myanmar. They endured a terrible boat ride to Thailand and had money for only one set of immigration papers. They decided to buy papers for Omar. He works hard to get the money for Nafisa’s papers. She must hide in their small apartment all the time. They must stay alert for the local police raids so that Nafisa will hide when the police come. Omar works at a local hotel.

Leo and his girlfriend Mya have been on a wonderful holiday and the island of Koh Tao in Thailand is their final destination. Leo is trying to find the perfect time and place to propose to Mya. When the time finally arrives, Mya just smiles, says: ”Come to me in five minutes and you will have the answer”, and leaves. But when Leo comes to their cabin, Mya has vanished without a trace.

Inspector Kaya hates the sleepy island. But a disappeared tourist might just be the ticket for him to get noticed and get a promotion off the island. Unfortunately, the only thing he knows what to do is to harass the Myanmar refugees.

The start of the novella is a little slow when we get to know Omar, Nafisa, Leo, and Mya. But when the action starts, it continues at a good pace. Leo clearly loves Mya and will do anything to get her back. He’s a former journalist so he has some idea what to do. Meanwhile, we get a hint that Mya is more than just a mysterious girlfriend. Omar just wants to do his job well so that he can buy Nafisa her papers and they can enjoy their life together.

This was a good introduction to a thriller series. The descriptions were vivid and the characters interesting. However, the mystery of Mya’s disapearance isn’t solved. It seems to be Leo’s driving force in the series.

An Earth Protection League stand-alone SF novella.

Publisher: WMG Publishing

Publishing year: 2021

Format: ebook

Wordcount from Amazon: 112

Friday ”Disco” Franks is 86 years old. He used to be a businessman but a couple of years ago he suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed. He lives in an old folk home. He has his eye on Emma Dakota who is just a couple of years younger but a volunteer at the home. They talk and hit it off. Emma is attracted to Friday, as well.

However, Friday has a secret: he’s a starship captain in the EPL. Very few people on Earth know about the ELP and they want to keep it that way. But Friday is convinced that Emma, a former pilot and a smart woman, would make a great recruit. It’s hard to convince modern people that Earth has a spacefaring protection league so it’s just easier to show. Friday asks Emma if he can take her with him and she agrees but later has almost decided not to go. However, when two young military women appear at Emma’s door, she hesitates. But in the end, she’s curious enough to agree to go with them.

In a moment she’s aboard a spaceship and the women explain to her what is going on. Essentially, when humans travel faster than light speed, their bodies become younger so EPL recruits only old people for missions away from Earth. The people’s minds and experiences remain the same. They also return within 15 minutes of leaving. But if they die in space, the EPL will leave a duplicate body in their stead.

This mission takes Friday and Emma to the edge of EPL space. A spaceship shaped like a big metal ball is heading toward Earth and it will reach Earth in a year. Based on its trajectory, it has come from outside our galaxy. It’s the size of Jupiter. Friday and Emma must investigate.

This was a fun exploration SF novella. It also has a mind kind of romance. Friday and Emma get together early in the story and then work together happily to solve the mysteries! Yes! No misunderstandings, no jealousy, no other romantic interests. We meet a couple of Friday’s crew and they’re also highly trained professionals who are doing their jobs.

I really enjoyed reading this and I will read others in the series. However, it seems that the others have other main characters. It’s a shame because I would have liked to read the further adventures of Friday and Emma.

A standalone X-Men book.

Format: Audio

Length: 10 hours 19 minutes

Publisher: Marvel Berkley

Publication year: 1997

Narrated by: James Anderson Foster

Ground-breaking research has revealed that the X-gene that gives mutants their powers can be destroyed with gene therapy. At the same time, a new law bill is advancing in Washington. It makes life-threatening illness treatment mandatory and defines mutation as a life-threatening illness. Professor Xavier and the X-Men are disturbed by both news, especially since Hank McCoy’s tests show that the treatment kills nearly half the mutants it is given to. The X-Men split up: Gambit and Rogue try to find the lab where the ”cure” is manufactured, Wolverine heads north to ask his old contacts what they know about this, and Xavier, Cyclops, Phoenix, Storm, and Psylocke go to Washington and try to stop the bill.

Meanwhile, five young mutants are giving themselves codenames and thinking about becoming superheroes. Their powers are minor and they haven’t trained much. They call themselves the Ohio Mutant Conspiracy. Pipedream can make a person hallucinate, Slapshot has minor telekinetic powers, and Rewind can rewind time but only under a minute. One has a dog’s senses and doesn’t have a codename. But their secret meeting is interrupted by men in armor who kidnap three of them. The other two try to help their friends.

This was mostly a good X-Men book. However, the original characters took too much page time and the twists were easy to see. Of course, the main villain is already on the cover so he wasn’t a surprise. While all the X-Men (the exceptions of Prof X and Beast) get a POV, most of the time their POVs are very short. The main POV characters, in addition to the original characters, were Wolverine, Cyclops, and Rogue. I also didn’t like that Rogue was portrayed as really dumb. The other characters had to explain to her three times why mandatory gene therapy would be a bad thing. Of course, they’re really explaining it to the reader. On the other hand, I really enjoyed some of her scenes.

The team is from the 1990s (of course). Jean and Scott are married and Scott is sane. Rogue and Gambit are dancing around each other. Xavier has trusted friends in the US goverment. This is my favorite X-Men era so I really enjoyed the X-Men scenes.

The book continues the familiar themes of humans fearing mutants but does not add anything new. When I was younger, I might have appreciated the teenage mutants more but now I would have wanted to read more about the X-Men.

This collection has twenty crime/mystery short stories from the two authors.

Publisher: WMG Publishing

Publishing year: 2022

Format: ebook

Wordcount from Amazon: 380

These stories have the theme of light or cozy crime. Four stories are fantasy and one SF but most don’t have any SFF elements.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Stomping Mad: Among the SF fans, Spade is known as a man who solves mysteries and crimes. But now in the First Annual Jurassic Parkathon, he is faced with perhaps the strangest case of his unofficial career. A woman has been murdered in one of the con suits. She was not well-liked so there are a lot of suspects. But if Spade can’t solve the case, the first Dinocon will be the last.

Murder, She Workshopped: The main character (whose name we don’t get to know) kills magical creatures for a living. The creatures are evil and impersonate humans. This time, the MC is going after a writer, Margarite. Whenever Margarite comes to a writing workshop, someone dies and Margarite makes a bestselling book out of the tragedy. The MC’s client thinks that Margarite kills the unfortunate person so the MC is going to kill whatever creature Margarite really is. The MC poses as a writer.

Eating it, too: Sophie is an excellent cook and her husband Harold never misses a meal. Then Sophie finds out something very disturbing.

Second Fiddle: Detective Ned Zalenski is very good at catching criminals. So, when his boss decides to bring in an outside consultant to the newest case, Ned resents that. The consultant in question is Sherlock Holmes, brought to the 1990s by a time machine. Ned doesn’t believe that Holmes has anything to contribute because Holmes is so out of touch. When Holmes does notice something Ned didn’t, Ned’s resentment only grows.

Nutball Season: A white-haired old man walks into Officer Nick Mantino’s office and complains that a woman intends to shoot him. The old man must visit the woman’s child because he visits every child on Christmas Eve. Nick, of course, thinks that he’s nuts. However, Nick agrees to meet the woman.

Doubting Thomas: When Thomas was a little boy, he saw three Santas break into his neighbor’s house. Neither his parents nor the police believed him. Ever since then, he has been convinced that Santa is actually a criminal organization that has managed a very clever ploy. This year, he’s going to prove it.

An Incursion of Mice: Longhaired Wall T, who used to be a show cat, now runs a tight household with two human servants and four other cats. When some of the other cats tell him about mice incursion, he must investigate. But he’s not going to like what he will find.

The Poop Thief: Portia runs a shop that sells familiars to magical people. Familiars are an important part of being able to do effective magic. However, Portia finds out something disturbing.

Scheduling Conflict: A woman calls Detective Riley Scott claiming that she has robbed a bank. Most likely it’s a hoax, but the police can’t just ignore the call. So Riley and his partner Dan head to the bank. Nobody has robbed it. Riley is frustrated but he can’t get her sexy voice from his mind. Then she calls again.

The Perfect Man: After moving to San Francisco, Paige has been lonely. She has a couple of female friends but it’s been a couple of years since her last date. Ironically, as a romance writer she writes about ideal men all the time. Now, she’s heading for a blind date. However, she quickly realizes that her date knows her books and is an obsessive fan. She leaves as soon as possible but he won’t leave her alone.

Dean Wesley Smith

Sprinkle on a Memory: Jason decorates cookies with his wife and daughter. The red sprinkles bring to mind how he murdered his first wife decades ago. But he also has memories of living with his first wife for decades.

Miss Smallwood’s Goodies: Someone brought a lifelike, naked, blue statue of a woman into one of Orgeon’s parks. The city asks Pilgrim Hugh to find out who did it.

The Remarkable Way She Died: Retired detectives Debra Pickett and Sarge Carson are looking into a cold case. Connie died in the middle of a street, standing up. There were no marks on her body.

A Life in Whoopees: Ben is 72 years old and he has had five whopee moments in his life. Some people don’t get even one. He tells us about the five moments.

A Bad Day for the Dream: Thirty years ago Becky went on a date and wasn’t seen since. Now, her body has turned up in the desert. The Cold Poker Gang are on the case.

Mated from the Morgue: Debbie is in the morgue. She can’t move and has been declared dead. However, she’s alive and conscious.

I Killed the Clockwork Key: An eerie Bryant Street story.

Half a Clue: Vicki was a lawyer and she vanished without a trace from her house 15 years ago. Now retired detectives Debra Pickett and Sarge Carson are looking into her case again.

The Case of the Man Who Saw: Pilgrim Hugh is again called to solve a strange case. A man claims that he was trying to help an accident victim but nobody else saw the victim on the road and there’s no blood.

Under the Skin of Death: Retired detectives Debra and Sarge are looking into another cold case. This time a woman’s mummified and burned body is found from the ruins of Moulin Rouge.

These stories show the difference between Rusch and Smith’s writing styles. Rusch writes longer stories and they sometimes have a melancholy air. Her ten stories take up 67% of the collection. Smith writes shorter, funnier, sexier, and punchier stories.

This collection has four stories from his Cold Poker Gang series where a group of retired police detectives solve cold cases in Las Vegas. I’ve read the first book in that series and it was quite entertaining.

Personally, I prefer Rusch’s style and stories but I also liked Smith’s stories. My favorites were Murder, She Workshopped, Poop Thief, and Second Fiddle

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a new Kickstarter project: Six Science Fiction Novellas.

The novellas are: The End of the World, G-Men, September at Wall and Broad, Recovering Apollo 8, The Tower, and The Gallery of His Dreams.

“When I write, I tell myself stories. I never know how long the story will run. I only know that the story will tell me its length, just like it’ll tell me what to focus on. I slip into the story, just like a reader does, and come out only when the story ends.

Some stories run long and become novels or novel series. Some stories are so short they only take a few pages. Then there are the novellas. Not a novel, not a short story, but in between.

Long enough to let the reader settle in and experience the world, short enough to read in one sitting if the reader so chooses.

These six books are novellas, but mostly, they’re set in a world that is not ours. It might seem like ours at first glance, but it’s not. It’s different, and the difference is, in my opinion, what makes the story fun.“

I’ve read three of the novellas and enjoyed them a lot. The project has rewards where you can get Rusch’s SF series and also two very interesting workshops for writers: How to market science fiction novellas and Power up you storytelling to keep readers reading (all through your novella).

Seven days to go. It’s already funded and reached two stretch goals so backers will get two SF novellettes for free.

A prequel novella to Kayla Stone thriller series.

Publication year: 2021

Format: ebook

Page count from GoodReads: 54

Rahul is just seven years old and he used to live on Mumbai’s streets after his parents died. However, now a fat man has forced him to join the ”family.” Rahul and the other children steal for the fat man so that they get a little food and less severe beatings. But Rahul is determined to run away and when given half a chance, he runs. But the men catch him and force him back to the hideout.

Kayla Stone is a young Australian woman. She has arrived for the first time in Mumbai, looking for something new and exciting. Instead, she finds a group of insufferable tourists who blame the poor for being poor. However, once she sees a man kidnapping a young boy from the street, she decides to try to find the boy and free him. For a lone woman, that’s very dangerous.

I mostly enjoyed this fast-paced short story. It’s a good introduction to Kayla who wants to help people who can’t help themselves. She’s a bit naive but otherwise a good person with good fighting skills. The only drawback was that the story has a lot of child abuse. The story also ends in a cliffhanger.

Mumbai is described well and vividly.

Storybundle has an interesting new bundle: The Galactic Mystery Bundle Curated by Simon Kewin:

Discover ancient interstellar secrets, mythical alien races and mind-blowing technologies! I’ve curated the Galactic Mystery bundle for StoryBundle: a collection of eleven awe-inspiring novels by bestselling authors and rising stars.

9 days left.

A science fiction and fantasy short story collection from Kowal.

Format: Audio

Publisher: Prime books

Publication year: 2015

Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal

The Bound Man: Li Reiko is playing with her children when she’s pulled into a different time and culture. In Li Reiko’s time, only women are warriors but in the new culture, only males are warriors. Her summoner wanted to call a legendary warrior to deal with a desperate situation. He’s dismayed when he realizes that Li Reiko is a woman. Li Reiko just wants to get back, but that might not be possible.

Chrysalis: This story has a fascinating alien culture where the aliens study seriously only in their larval state. As adults, they don’t even remember much of their studies. The main character sends letters to her grandmother and the story unfolds that way. She’s a documentary maker. Her documentary is about one alien who is nearing his chrysalis. The alien argues with his fiancee and the document maker itches to help them, but she must remain neutral.

Rampion: The main character yearns for a child but her husband can’t give that to her. So, she has an affair to get one. However, things go really wrong.

At the Edge of Dying: Kahe’s wife Mehahui is dying and he’s doing everything he can think of to save her. However, here magic is linked to dying. So, for a brief time, Mehahui is very powerful and she wants to use her magic to save her tribe.

Clockwork Chickadee: The Chickadee can’t fly but a clockwork Sparrow can. The Sparrow constantly talks about himself as better than the other mechanical animals. The Chickadee has a plan to change that.

Body Language: Saskia is a puppeteer but robots and artificial intelligence are taking away her work. When the FBI asks her to teach their AI to control a puppet, she refuses at first. But a boy has been kidnapped and the puppet is the only way to deliver the ransom money. Saskia convinces the FBI that she’s the only one who can do the job.

Waiting for Rain: Bharat is a winemaker but he’s so much in debt that he can’t pay for the right weather anymore. So, now it’s warm and sunny the whole time until he pays for rain. The grapes will be ruined. Bharat struggles to water the grapes without telling his family. Meanwhile, his daughter wants an extravagant wedding and his wife suspects him of cheating.

First Flight: Elois is 100 years old. So, she’s the perfect candidate for time travel because people can only travel back during their own lifetime. She’s sent to 1905 to record the Wright brothers’ first flight. Of course, she’s not supposed to affect anyone or anything but things don’t go as expected.

Evil Robot Monkey: Sly is a chimpanzee with a chip in his head. The chip augmented his intelligence to that of a human but he still lives in a zoo and is treated like an animal.

The Consciousness Problem: After a car crash, Elise has a mental disability and can’t work anymore. Her husband works in a lab that specializes in cloning humans. He has cloned himself and the clone is asking after Elise.

For Solo Cello, op. 12: The main character is a genius cellist. Or rather he used to be before he lost his right arm. There is a way to get it back but at a great cost.

For Want of a Nail: The story is set in a generation starship where everything is run by AI and computers. When a human becomes old (or disabled, I guess) and can’t be useful anymore, they are expected to be recycled. Cordelia is the AI for Rava’s family. Rava is Cordelia’s ”wrangler” and she notices some glitches in Cordelia.

The Shocking Affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland: A Sherlock Holmes pastiche from the point of view of a naive young woman.

Salt of the Earth: Melia’s older child Nicholas is autistic. Her ex-husband Theo is impatient and careless with Nicholas she worries that the kids aren’t treated well. Still, Melia must give the kids to him every other week. The world was fascinating: it lacks salt, so salt is the currency.

American Changeling: Kim is the only child of her fairy parents. She was born and raised in the mortal world. She has been trained all her life on a couple of rituals, but she’s not sure if she even believes in the existence of Fairy which is the home of all fairies. On her sixteenth birthday, she’s supposed to open a doorway to Fairy. It’s still a couple of months away. But when her parents get a letter from the Fairy Queen, Kim must be up to the challenge.

The White Phoenix Feather: Viola provides dangerous dining experiences to rich clients. Viola and her client are meeting in a very upscale restaurant while ninjas attack them. But these ninjas and samurais aren’t human. They are alien creatures. The ninjas are males of the species and the samurai are the females and more dangerous than the ninjas.

We Interrupt This Broadcast: This was a very dark story. Two people think that only a very drastic action will make things better for humans, eventually.

Rockets Red (A brand new story in the Lady Astronaut universe): Erin would be the first human to make fireworks on Mars. But an accident happens and now it’s unlikely that Erin can succeed.

The Lady Astronaut of Mars: the novella that started the Lady Astronaut of Mars series. Elsa York is 63 and the first female astronaut. But she hasn’t flown in years but she still wants to. When she’s asked to fly one more mission, she wants very badly to go. But her husband won’t live long enough for her to return from the long voyage.

I enjoyed most of these stories although some of them were a bit too dark for my tastes. They were well written, particularly those that were from the POV of the elderly. My favorites were Rockets Red, First Flight, and American Changling.