Mini-Review: The Deaths of Tao by Wesley Chu

The Tao books by Wesley Chu are the perfect spy thrillers for a generation where science fiction is mainstream and dominates pop culture. They are action-packed, full of intrigue, both political and personal, witty, funny, and wrap it all up in alien possession. And of course who could be a more perfect choice for a heroic spy than an overweight, single, gamer in a dead end job?

The Deaths of Tao is the second book of the series, which is in part a trilogy, though it has expanded with a ‘coda’ novella and now a new series set in the world. The Lives of Tao began the series (my review) with a bang and The Deaths of Tao follows up a typical middle book does. Things go dark, it gets bad, really bad. Lack of hope bad. And in the end…well a tiny bit of hope gets thrown in just as a huge and unexpected curveball is thrown in to the mix. And Chu makes this all work without losing the witty, slightly irreverent voice that somehow makes a spy-thriller about alien-possessed people who secretly control the world something that isn’t just believable (in a fiction sense), but is a lot fun to read.

Go forth and read. And believe. And have fun.

Tao Series

The Lives of Tao: My Review, Amazon

The Deaths of Tao: Amazon

The Rebirths of Tao: Amazon

The Days of Tao: Amazon

Io Series

The Rise of Io: Amazon

Kids’ Reviews: Septimus Heap, Ivy and Bean and More!

It’s been a while since I’ve provided an update on my Kids’ Review series, so here we are. For an introduction to this series, information isavailable in this post which provides a good bit of context.

Hebop turned 9 last month and continues with an, at times, voracious love of reading. We are slowly letting him read through the Harry Potter books and he just finished up The Goblet of Fire in a fury last weekend that saw him reading for hours at time (this is a kid who never stops moving, so to see him so still is shocking). He has since started the Percy Jackson books next – he gave them a shot a year or more ago but wasn’t terribly interested and just not quite ready. I think he’s matured enough now that it may be different this time around. We still read aloud with Hebop at times, but he’s mostly solo now, which was quite impressive give the size of The Goblet of Fire. Hebop can have a short attention span at times as he jumps around from the likes of Goosebumps to Spirit Animals to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. For his birthday he got some fiction and nonfiction soccer books and it’ll be interesting to see when he gives those a try and what he thinks.

Arty turned 6 earlier this month and is thick in the transition from shorter books to chapter stories. She recently left behind Magic Treehouse books – she still can get scared/anxious with some books, and the later Magic Treehouse books can be surprising tense at times with a fair amount of implied death and destruction. So we’ve started in on Critter Club and Ivy & Bean books. She’s enjoying both – especially Ivy & Bean. The love of Ivy & Bean has introduced quite a few conversations about good choices and following rules. We’ve now read a couple of the Critter Club books and the first three of Ivy and Bean. Both series are working great for Arty. A month or two ago, we read Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone with her – she loved it, but also has nightmares about Voldemort (tales of later books from Hebop are no help here). She watched the movie, but we’ve backtracked and will wait another year before doing more to give time for the nightmares to go away.

As a family we’ve been reading aloud the Septimus Heap books. So far we’ve read the first two (Magyk and Flyte) in the series (the kids’ will get the full series for Christmas). I think it’s probably safe to call them Harry Potter knock-offs, but they are a lot fun and both kids enjoy them. I find it surprising that Arty doesn’t seem to be bothered by the more tense and serious parts of these books when she was by Harry Potter, but that’s how it works sometimes. So, I can easily recommend these books – as always, check to see how they match up with your own positions on age-appropriateness. I often use Common Sense Media as an initial tool to help with that.

Septimus Heap by Angie Sage

Book 1: Magyk    Amazon

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

Book 1: The Lightning Thief    Amazon

Goosebumps by R.L. Stine

Book 1: Night of the Living Dummy    Amazon

Spirit Animals

Book 1: Wild Born by Brandon Mull    Amazon

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Book 1: Diary of a Wimpy Kid    Amazon

Critter Club by Callie Barkley

Book 1: Amy and the Missing Puppy    Amazon

Ivy & Bean by Annie Barrows

Book 1: Ivy & Bean    Amazon

The Magic Treehouse by Mary Pope Osborne

Book 1: Dinosaurs Before Dark    Amazon

Mini-Review: Willful Child: Wrath of Betty by Steven Erikson

Willful Child: Wrath of Betty by Steven Erikson is a sequel Willful Child. Therefore, I recommendthat you stop now and read the review I wrote for it as I think it’s valuableto have that perspective before getting to what I write below.

If anything, in the two years since I wrote that review, my thoughts on Willful Child have only grown stronger. I think it is a superb satire of far more than just Star Trek, but read the review for that. I’ve come to realize that while the humor of that book is certainly coarse and inappropriate, that plenty of people ‘get it’ and therefore see what Erikson is doing in the book. All this adds up to me being very happy to read the sequel.

Unfortunately, I was largely unimpressed. Of course, I enjoyed a lot of what Erikson was doing with the book and how he plays with both time travel and parallel-dimension issues. I particularly found the gender-swap / parallel world parts to be well done and timely given so much of what’s going on. And of course, it’s hard for someone like myself to not be immensely amused by the comic-con sequence. Really, Wrath of Betty is worth reading for those two parts regardless of my overall disappointment.

Where does my disappointment come from? It’s all in the timing. Wrath of Betty continues the satirical directions from Willful Child, with a strong focus on the consumerism and rampant capitalism of the Western world. And this is unfortunately where it misses. Often the most effective satire works because it feels particularly timely to what’s going on in the culture it targets. Generally consumerism and capitalism are perfect elements for satire to target, but at least for me, it misses the elephant in the room for a satirical book published in 2016. I am speaking of the big issues we all see too much of right now – from Brexit to the US election and the idiot who will remain nameless, and war and refugees, etc. etc. A satire focused so much on consumerism simply doesn’t stick with me right now – it feels off topic, especially since reality is so primed for good satire (though admittedly, Brexit and the US election are often plenty satirical without any help at all).  

I do think that the focus on consumerism and capitalism in Wrath of Betty is likely to be more timeless and therefore would have more staying power than the satire I wanted to read. But, it remains that I simply couldn’t enjoy things as much as I wanted to. Yes, I realize that due to just how it works writing a novel, that Wrath of Betty was largely written well before reality jumped the shark, but that intellectual knowledge doesn’t really help my reaction to the book.

So, while I think Wrath of Betty is a worthy follow-up to Willful Child, it didn’t work well for me. However, it may well work for you.

Willful Child: Amazon, My Review

Willful Child: Wrath of Betty: Amazon

Mini-Review: Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen

I live in the West and I have a soft-spot for the ‘weird west’, at least when it’s done well. So, I was intrigued by Wake of Vultures by Lila Bowen – it sounded like something different … something weird and west in all of the best ways. Not only was I not disappointed, but it far exceeded my expectations.

In my mind I have so many good things to say about this book, but I love this elevator pitch from the author herself:

It’s Lonesome Dove meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a biracial, genderqueer heroine.

SOLD!

Honestly, I’d throw in a comparison to Preacher as well, not for anything specific, but these two just feel like they get each other. Note: that Bowen quote is from The Big Idea:Lila Bowen, which absolutely worth a full read if you’re wondering about this book.

It’s the voice of Nettie Lonesome that stands out perhaps most of all. She’s caustically witty, sarcastically ignorant, and delightfully direct. Reminiscent of the strong voice of Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear, to throw yet another comparison into this review.

Nettie’s journey of self-discovery and struggle with her identity brings the depth to Wake of Vultures, but what I want to emphasize is the wonderful, weird fun of the book. It’s a menagerie of fantastical beasts in the scrub-lands of the West, mixing mythologies with a dark, cynical tinge wrapped in just enough humor. It’s a perfect setting for some monster hunting fun: vampire bordellos, sirens at the bar, chupacabra roaming the range, harpies circling above, werewolves on a warpath, and a band of monster hunting rangers on the prowl.

Wake of Vultures is a fun read full of weird, even horrific, adventures in a re-imagined West. I thoroughly enjoyed it and enthusiastically recommend it. Also…it’s only the beginning of The Shadow series, with a sequel, Conspiracy of Ravens, coming in October, 2016, and more books planned for the future.

The Shadow Series:

Wake of Vultures: Amazon

Conspiracy of Ravens: Amazon

Review: The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley

The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley is the final volume in the Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne trilogy. In my review of the first book, The Emperor’s Blades, I dig into how I felt uninspired because it was about a fight for the status quo, there was no progress, nothing new had been added. Yes, I enjoyed the book because Staveley is an excellent story teller, the book was exciting, and so well paced that I always needed to know what would happen next. Ultimately, that was enough to encourage me to read the sequel.

In my review of The Providence of Fire, I got excited. The Emperor’s Blades was a set-up, and big things happened in book 2. Huge I tell you. There are progressive ideas – thoughts of moving things forward. And it was so well wrapped together, that it was simply impossible to tell who was bad and who was good. Where was it all going to go? There were so many possibilities.

Of course, I had my hopes and ideas of where it was going. They were some really good ideas. They built on the ambiguity of book 2, explored some the more interesting (to me) concepts developed in The Providence of Fire. I was certain Staveley was with me in this, that he was going to pluck these ideas right out of my head, run with them, and then turn them around a few times to put some real sting into it.

But….Staveley wasn’t with me, he had ideas all his own. Yes, they are good ideas – there’s excitement, the stakes are upped even further, more complications added, and some really great fighting and sacrifice, and an unexpected character (Gwenna) leaps up and steals the whole show.

But…I wanted to see my ideas. And so I was disappointed. Much of what excited me about The Providence of Fire was abandoned in The Last Mortal Bond – the empire was not on a progressive path of improvement. In the end…we just got the status quo again. And that pissed me off – I’m just tired of epic fantasy that leaves us with the status quo. Where the people aren’t better off and there isn’t really hope that things have changed a bit. Just a bunch of big battles, lots of death, young leaders learn valuable lessons, the meaning of life is love, blah, blah, blah, and…the same old shit goes on into the future.

I had other ideas too – damn good ones. Of how the gods interacted with humanity and the immortal ‘elves’. I was looking forward to the ambiguity of good and evil, only to have a standard Big Bad fixated on as the story moves forward in more or less predictable ways.  

So, overall, I am fairly disappointed with how The Last Mortal Bond wraps things up. Yes, it was fun, and Staveley is just so excellent with the pacing, action, and tension that it really is almost impossible to stop reading his books. I know that it’s my own expectations that lead to my disappointment, and not (necessarily) what Staveley actually did with the book – because it’s not bad, not bad at all. It’s just that I saw so much potential in The Providence of Fire and where things could be taken, and it was crushing to see The Last Mortal Bond take the path that pretty much everyone else before has taken.

Final verdict: Good series, fun writing, exactly what fans of traditional epic fantasy crave…safe. But damn, it could have been great.

Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne

The Emperor’s Blades: My Review, Amazon

The Providence of Fire: My Review, Amazon

The Last Mortal Bond: Amazon

Set in the Same World As Emperor’s Blades

Skullsworn (forthcoming): Amazon

Mini-Review: Los Nefilim by T. Frohock

In Los Nefilim, T. Frohock imagines a world where angels, demons, and their human hybrids (nefilim) live and act mostly unnoticed in the world. The focus is on Barcelona in the 1930s and Diago, a unique nefilim with both angel and demon blood. Diago’s family is threatened as angels and demons battle for the future of the world in the face of oncoming war.

Magical battle, torture, betrayal. Yes these things occur and are important. But the soul of the book is in love and relationships. A son and his estranged father, the son a father of a son he does not know, lovers, friends. Add time and betrayal. The sum is greater than the parts where the past must be addressed to accept the present, to know oneself and finally submit to the love all around. To fight without quarter for the ones that are loved. This is Los Nefilim, historic context with consequences for all of humanity, but played out at a personal level.

The foundation of this powerful story is a poetic prose, dark and moody, yet infused with color and music as it embodies hope, love and loyalty. Yes, there is a lot of conflict in that last statement, as is appropriate in a story full of internal and external conflict. It’s the grounded, devoted love that keeps it all together.

As you have probably guessed by now, I really enjoyed Los Nefilim. It’s beautiful, moving, filled with suspense. It kept me up at night because I could not put it down. I want to read more of Diago, Miquel, Rafael, Guillermo, and others. It’s historic urban fantasy, not quite alternative history, and it’s a powerful portrayal of love and family.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that the main family unit at the heart of Los Nefilim is two male partners. The relationship is genuine, heartfelt and simply lovely. I await the day when focus on a same-sex couple is not noteworthy and commonplace, but we aren’t there yet, and it’s books like Los Nefilim that will get us there.

A few logistical notes: Los Nefilim is in reality a print collection of 3 novellas that were initially published electronically: In Midnight’s Silence, Without Light or Guide, and The Second Death. The reality is that the three independent novellas seamlessly work as a traditionally structured novel. Read it as a serial, collection, or single work – it doesn’t matter. But I certainly recommend that you read it.

Los Nefilim: Amazon

In Midnight’s Silence: Amazon

Without Light or Guide: Amazon

The Second Death: Amazon

Mini-Review: Broken by Susan Jane Bigelow

A woman is so broken by life, not only has she adopted the name Broken, but she is incapable of escape – because there is essentially nothing she can do to die. She picks a fight, she heals before death. She tries to commit suicide – it won’t take, she heals after the attempt. The healing is pain. The pain is the only part of life she ‘enjoys’. Folks…this is the backstory, this is where it begins. And of course, Broken is a superhero and there was a time when she could fly.

Broken by Susan Jane Bigelow is extraordinary in its portrayal of superheroes, or extrahumans, as they are called in Bigelow’s books. Everyone loves a label, so let’s call this post-superhero literature. This is the maturation of superheroes in popular culture, and it was originally published in 2011 (and now republished by The Book Smugglers Publishing), so a few years before the current height of superheroes in pop culture had been reached.

It’s a few decades into a dystopic future where the US was on the losing side of a global war. Extrahumans, each with a superpower or two, have become a tool of the government, both hated and loved, but hated more and more. A new government has taken over, much more authoritarian, and full of parallels to groups like the Nazis, or even to the troubling groups in visible in today’s politics. A baby is born – prescient extrahumans have seen a future where things get better, seemingly infinitely better. They have also seen a future where he makes it much, much worse. It falls to a young teen, an unregistered extrahuman who sees countless possible futures when he looks others in the eyes – even his own eyes in the mirror, where he has seen his own death too many times. He finds Broken and together they try.

As positive as I am above, I must admit that dystopic books are not something I read often – it’s just not my thing. I imagine it’s a result of just where I am in life, how hard it is, and how damned stressed out and depressed I am much of the time. I simply cannot enjoy books where that sort of world dominates, where all too real situations dominate, where hope tastes of ashes. I suppose that’s why I like my SFF extra fantastic, where things are unreal and metaphoric as opposed to a version of reality that’s all too real. Call me a dreamer or escapist. So, generally, I avoid the whole dystopian thing.

Given these preferences of my reading, it’s hard for me to say that I enjoyed reading Broken. It’s hard, bad things happen, and hope is scarce, though always present in the background. It’s just not my thing. However, I can see the brilliance of the concept and the success of the execution. Broken is an incredible novel, both timeless and perfectly timed to the now. While I would probably argue that dystopic SFF is becoming overdone to the point of dulling its impact, the genre is primed for the concept of post-superhero fiction. And there’s much more to be said than I get into here. It’s done so well that I just might read the other books of the Extrahuman Union series, knowing that they aren’t my thing. Because as good as Broken is, I’m very curious to see what comes next.

The Extrahuman Union Series

Broken: Amazon

Sky Ranger: Amazon

The Spark: Amazon (forthcoming)

Extrahumans: Amazon (forthcoming)

Kids Review: HiLo by Judd Winick

As my son, Hebop, has become more of an independent reader, he’s become more interested in the books I receive for review. Arguably, it started with Star Wars and seeing Star Wars book covers that really got him paying attention, but I think that he really began to understand that some of these books are perfect for him with HiLo Book 1: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth by Judd Winick.

It was fall of 2014 when Hebop was looking over my shoulder as I opened a few books that had come in the mail. One of these was an advanced copy of a graphic novel: HiLo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth. He immediately grabbed it and started to look, with me looking over his shoulder. ‘Dad, can have this book?’. I looked at my wife, we both shrugged, and said yes. He runs off to his room to read. He spent at least the next 2 hours reading, right up until bedtime. He repeatedly requested that either my wife or I (or both) read with him – him reading to us. And he finished the book. I believe this was his first true graphic novel.

‘Dad, I need more books like this.’

In short, it’s a charming story of friendship where a boy (D.J.) befriends a mysterious boy/robot he names HiLo who crashes to earth. The boy, his best friend Gina, and HiLo then save the world. It’s nice because the main characters are both gender and racially diverse, and in spite of the superhero sort of feel, it’s a story of friendship.

Hebop read HiLo over and over again (at least 6 times) for the next week or two. He told all of his friends and brought the book to share. Later, when I got the finished copy, I never even saw it as it went straight to his room. The advance copy was given to his best friend, who quickly had similar love for the book (his mom has thanked us repeatedly for passing on a book that he was so excited about). For the end of the year book exchange, we had to buy a copy of HiLo to include – no other book would do.

A couple of months ago, I got HiLo Book 2: Saving the Whole Wide World in the mail. We excitedly gave Hebop the book, and he excitedly read the whole wide book that night. Then he read it again a few times. By now, graphic novels aren’t new anymore and we have a number around the house, so the excitement wasn’t as enthusiastic as before, though that’s not to say that he wasn’t extremely excited to get book 2. Though we were both (happily) frustrated with the cliff-hanger ending that left us wanting book 3 now.

So, HiLo is a hit in my house. It’s a ‘superhero’ graphic novel that I have no issues sharing with an 8 year old (or 7 year old as when he first saw it). And I am happy to highly recommend it.

HiLo

HiLo Book 1: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth: Amazon

HiLo Book 2: Saving the Whole Wide World: Amazon

Something New: Kids’ Reviews

Hi all, long time followers here on the blog and other social media know that in real life I am a father, among other things. It is not a surprise that I share my love of reading with my children, and I’ve long contemplated sharing that aspect of my reading life here on the blog. I’ve gone back and forth – separate blogs (I even have several registered, just never posted) or whatever, but the reality is that I will never post often enough to really justify that. So, I’ve decided that they will be integrated here on the blog.

My concept of this will likely evolve significantly through time and vary a fair amount from post to post. Some will be little more than the reaction of one (or both) of my children. Sometimes I might focus on my experience reading a book with them, and others will be a hybrid. But they likely won’t be typical reviews.

Also, I doubt I’ll spend much time on the ‘obvious’ books. For example, my son and I (and my wife) have been reading through the Harry Potter books. We do it slowly, because my wife and I feel that there are aspects of the books that an 8 year old is not ready for. And we don’t let him see the movies until we read the books (my daughter will start next year). Everyone knows that kids love the Harry Potter books and movies – and it is loads of fun to read those books with my son and then watch the movie, but that’s not something that really needs a lot of extra attention. So, don’t expect a lot of coverage there. Also, I may cover something that is really a very big thing, perhaps closing in on Harry Potter scale, but if it’s new to me (and a lot is/will be) then I may go ahead and cover it anyway. However it works out, I think we can all agree that excitement around children reading is a good thing to share.

So, I’ll introduce you to my children’s internet names (that I made up for this). It’s possible (likely) that I have inadvertently referred to them by name somewhere on my blog or social media, but I have chosen give them some privacy either way (hell, I don’t openly publish my own full name here on the blog, though it wouldn’t take too much digging to excavate it). 

Hermes (Hebop) is my 8 year old son. He loves all sports (especially soccer) and is always in motion. We work hard for balance and he also does piano and we have instilled a love for reading. He reads quite well for a second grader and reads a variety from silly comics, to rather long novels, to graphic novels. In the near future, most of these posts will focus on Hebop due to where he is at developmentally.

Atë/Artemis/Aristaeus (Arty) is my 5 year old daughter. As the Greek references imply, she’s a bit mischievous (much more sly than my son), and also a very big animal lover, especially dogs. She doesn’t yet read on her own (that will be a summer project this year in prep for Kindergarten). She dances ballet, occasionally plays soccer, and will (hopefully) start piano soon. It’ll probably a few years before Arty is a big focus for these posts.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this new direction (I’ll try to remember to tag the posts with Kids Reviews) and just maybe fellow parents, and anyone looking for reading ideas for little ones, will discover a few gems along the way.

‘Review’: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson

What feels like a long time ago and practically a different life, I wrote this review of The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. In that review I was excited – I was reading a new Mistborn book by Sanderson, one that basically came out of nowhere and pleasantly surprised fans, and one that I was reading months before Sanderson’s rabid fan base was going to see it. It seems to have surprised Sanderson nearly as much, because a small side project, one that wasn’t planned to have sequels has grown into a fully-fledged trilogy (EDIT: I have been informed that The Alloy of Law is a stand-alone, and technically Shadows of Self is the start of the trilogy).

I’m now a few years older and a lot more overwhelmed in life. My reading tastes have evolved and grown a bit. I’ve become a bit more bitter and jaded at a time when I’ve also become more hopeful as I often intentionally pull on the blinders to the world around me and simply enjoy fatherhood.

Anyway…I’m getting a bit too self-indulgent.

After a having a copy of the sequel to The Alloy of Law, Shadows of Self, for over a year, I finally got around to reading it, in spite of just how much I wanted to immediately see a sequel 5 years ago. Anyway, for whatever reason (perhaps all the reasons?), I can’t say that I’m equally as excited after reading Shadows of Self as I was back then – I literally stayed up half the night to immediately write my review of The Allow of Law, immediately requested an interview with Sanderson (and was granted that request in short-order). Now…well, I finished reading the book a month ago and am just now reviewing it, I haven’t done an interview in years and don’t plan on doing one now. So… is this lack of enthusiasm me or the book? (It’s me, but really, that’s not what I want to dwell any more on).

Shadows of Self is an excellent follow-up to The Alloy of Law – it does everything a sequel in a fantasy trilogy setting should do. The scope grows, the stakes are larger, more is explained, characters grow and history is revealed, things get dark, and for fans of Sanderson’s Cosmere, goodies abound. And Sanderson revels in his strengths – the magic is right in the reader’s face, there are adventures and battles, and the world of Mistborn is further revealed. Which of course only leaves more questions to be answered. As I said, this is a very solid second act for a trilogy not-trilogy. 

This is the second book, of a second trilogy set in a secondary fantasy world (surely, this unlocks some super-secret epic fantasy magical power?) (EDIT: Note, I'm keeping this line because it's cool, even if it doesn't work since technically Shadows of Self is the first book in the trilogy). It’s pretty safe to say that if you are considering reading this book, you are already a fan of Brandon Sanderson. You are a fan of Mistborn. You probably know more about Mistborn and the Cosmere than I do. So, let’s face it, this review doesn’t matter. The only people reading it have either read the book already or will read it regardless of the words here at my little blog.

Which brings me full circle to the indulgence of self. Hell, this review jumped the shark, went off the rails, tipped back the bottle a while back. Hell, I’m just excited that for the first time in years I won’t have a backlog of reviews to write and I can’t believe that anyone is still actually reading this. Bless you for that, but really, I’m sure there’s something better that you can be doing with the time.

Anyway…read Shadows of Self – it’s a fun book that fans of Sanderson will love. And I suppose I should read the final next book in the trilogy: The Bands of Mourning. I should probably even ‘review’ it, though will I be able top this piece of …

Mistborn

Mistborn: Amazon

The Well of Ascension: Amazon

The Hero of Ages: Amazon

The Alloy of Law: Amazon

Shadows of Self: Amazon

The Bands of Mourning: Amazon

Mini-Review: Mystic by Jason Denzel

Author Jason Denzel is best known for running the Wheel of Time fansite, Dragonmount, and in 2015, he published his debut novel, Mystic. Fans who know Jason (and I’m one, going back to my days spending untold of hours on Wheel of Time message boards), probably expect Jason’s novel to be world-spanning, epic fantasy adventure in the same vein of Wheel of Time. They would be wrong.

Mystic takes a different, more focused approach. This book is an origin story, almost a prequel to a series that hasn’t been published yet. It’s not (well, mostly not) the story of an epic journey to save the world. Mystic is the story of a young woman’s (Pomella) journey, her personal struggles against a severely stratified society, and her own baggage from that society. It’s the journey of a young woman breaking barriers and learning her magic. It’s heartwarming, sweet, with a good bit of misguided teenage action. In this, it’s a classic YA book with a good bit of cross-over appeal.

Yes, there is a threat, a threat that could have dire consequences to the world. But the threat feels almost contrived – it really was a placeholder, something to pitch the growth and struggles of Pomella against. In this way, the book is more about her own internal struggles than the external struggles around.

This internal, almost small-scale focus is both the strength and weakness of Mystic. The fan base Jason is chasing after is most likely expecting a sprawling epic that stand on the shoulders of 1990s era big fat fantasy. They may bounce off of the modest page count and ‘lower stakes’ journey of a young woman. That would be unfortunate, as the story is well told, even as it shows many of the signs of an author still in development rather than full command of their skills.

I enjoyed Mystic, and I look forward to reading what Jason does with this series in the future. However, it does not really cover any new ground. That’s not (necessarily) a bad thing – not every book can or should be groundbreaking, but in a time when so many exciting things are happening in the world of SFF books, this is the sort of thing that could fall through the cracks. Or maybe it’s the sort of book that could really take off due to its accessibility. It’s hard to say.

Mystic: Amazon

Review: Black Wolves by Kate Elliott

First, I need to get this out of the way right up front: Black Wolves by Kate Elliott is one of the most extraordinary epic fantasy books I’ve ever read.

Got it?

Good, because that is a very important perspective that must be understood, especially as I dive into what is undeniably a rambling, unfocused review that says little about book plot and probably says more about my own relationship with epic fantasy than anything else. Feel free to move along knowing that as I said above, Black Wolves is extraordinary and I cannot recommend it enough.

Still with me? Good.

The aspect of Black Wolves that makes it so extraordinary (get used to this word, as I will keep using it), is the scope of its ambition. Black Wolves embraces the full history of epic fantasy, converses with it, moves into interrogation, then subversion, and spits it back out as something new. And this is done in every aspect of the book.

The beauty of this approach and the shear skill and will Elliott wields to pull it all together makes for a reading experience more fulfilling than any I can recall in recent years. For one thing – I literally had no real idea of just where the story was going to go. There were too many options – I could see a vast array of possibilities, and then Elliott would go in a different direction, bring in a new reveal. It was absolute fun and entertainment – yes, as I will discuss soon, this book has a lot of serious and important things that it does, but that fun and entertainment is never lost. The reader is cheering the characters, invested and rewarded. The dark, grim nastiness of the book, it’s interrogation with more than just itself, but an entire genre and those writing it today, are present without ever losing that critical enjoyment of reading, the investiture of the fan. It’s a bloody brilliant maneuver to see succeed.

Black Wolves takes on many of the most common thematic elements of epic fantasy – colonialism, religion, role and execution of government, class system, war and its consequences, violence, gender roles, racial/ethnic tensions, inspirations from non-Western societies, and many more. Any one of these aspects could become quite a lengthy discussion, along with a few that I didn’t mention.

Many reviews and discussions of Black Wolves have (rightly so) devoted time to discussing gender, and to a lesser degree, age, aspects of the book. Black Wolves is full of strong women with agency, which is becoming much more of the standard to achieve rather than an exception to the state of genre, so I won’t focus on that too much (others have already done this and much better than I can anyway). The aspect that I enjoyed and felt was more fresh was the inclusion and focus on older characters. An aging, retired spy/soldier and a Princess who has grown into a commanding role in a corps of specialized soldiers who bond with and fly giant eagles (which, is really cool in of and by itself). It’s rare for older characters to play more than an aging sage, mentor, monarch, etc. – and when they do, it’s very often that they will be killed off early in the series. So, it’s refreshing that arguably the two most important characters in Black Wolves are long past their youth. And I would certainly speculate that it takes an author with a long history in the genre to make these characters work so well.

It’s also nice to see that every single character in this book has its flaws – there simply isn’t anything universally likeable or unlikeable about any of them. That is a difficult balance to pull off. But, I’m not going to go into any detail of this beyond this mention that characters a fully rounded people and never an encyclopedia entry.

As I’ve matured in my own reading journey through the years, I’ve become far less focused on battles, world-building, and other such details of fantasy books. Often what really gets me excited is fully developed political maneuvering and all of the unpredictability that come from a multitude of intelligent, motivated people all working to further their own interests within and beyond the constraints the world places on them. In Black Wolves we have all that through a King, his wives, his sons and daughters, and a few other, more mysterious groups. Throw in the cultural/colonial appropriation and re-write of history and things get very interesting indeed. As I said above, this creates a mystery and unpredictability of the narrative that keeps tensions high, even as the book drags a bit in the middle.

And this brings us to perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Black Wolves, one that occurred to me much more in retrospect than while I was too busy simply enjoying the book: change. Cultural change to be sure, but Black Wolves is more than just an epic fantasy thriller wrapped around a period of monumental cultural change. To a degree (in my opinion, a large degree), it’s a meta commentary on the cultural change that the entire SFF field is going through. And it’s brutally unapologetic in this interrogation as it revels the change of today and those to come. Change is messy: it’s messy in Black Wolves, I suspect it’ll get messier in the sequels to come, and cultural wars facing genre today, while overall moving things into a much better place, are too often cruel, disheartening, disgusting, tortuous, as they leave countless casualties in their wake. Black Wolves is an answer of perseverance to all that. As I’ve hinted at above, it takes an author who has been too often on the receiving end of a brutal patriarchy for her entire career to seize the opportunity of this time and celebrate the possibilities of the future, all the while shouting ‘Fuck You’ to the haters. Bloody brilliant I say.

As I have now repeated said, Black Wolves is an extraordinary epic fantasy that can be enjoyed on many different levels. One does not have to see the meta interrogation of genre if one doesn’t want to – it can be enjoyed as a great, fun book to read. And, one can enjoy it for other reasons than I focused on in this review. This book is the real deal and a shining example of what can be done. Simply put, the best thing I can say in this review is: READ IT NOW!

And I figure I should get out a few final details that some may find important and/or helpful. Black Wolves is the first book in a planned trilogy. It is also set in the same world, though many years after the events of the Crossroads Trilogy. Black Wolves is the first book by Elliott that I’ve read (and it certainly won’t be the last), so it can easily be enjoyed with no knowledge from the first series, though I predict that knowledge from that series may enhance some aspects of one’s enjoyment. Anyway, do not let this book pass you by.

Crossroads Trilogy

Spirit Gate: Amazon

Shadow Gate: Amazon

Traitors Gate: Amazon

Black Wolves Trilogy

Black Wolves: Amazon