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Blood Bound

Mercy Thompson book #2

by Patricia Briggs

Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs

Another excellent showing here, with Mercy Thompson getting caught up with the local vampire seethe, whilst trying not to get her friendly neighbourhood werewolves too entangled in the resulting mess. The tone was sometimes much darker than the first of the Mercy Thompson books, as getting involved with the vampires seemed to involve getting a whole lot of blood over many things. If you don’t like your urban fantasy too gritty, this might be a problem, but I felt it was all in keeping with the plot, and none of it was gratuitous or merely put in to shock.

Four stars this time instead of five, as I was a little alarmed with the way an increasing number of the other main characters seem to be falling romantically for Mercy herself. I also wasn’t totally convinced by Mercy’s motivations to go out hunting alone again in the final 30 or so pages of the book. Still, very enjoyable, and I’ll be reading more!

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Book review

Dungeon Born

by Dakota Krout

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This is a book in the “LitRPG” genre, which for those of us who spent their adolescence with a bunch of other social misfits, surrounded by character charts, multi-sided dice, and rule books for various role-playing games (RPGs), will seem somewhat familiar. In this case, it’s the story of a dungeon, and how it grows up. For it turns out that dungeons, in this world at least, grow from small crystal cores, which slowly gain more abilities to shape the earth and stone around them, and to imbue with life increasingly powerful creatures (rarely friendly) to populate their underworld passages. Add in some adventurers (including one by the name of Dale, who sort-of accidentally owns the land on which this dungeon is growing), and an interesting set of physical laws for the universe, based on the accretion of various “essences” into your soul to increase your powers, and off you go!

I hadn’t met this literary genre until I picked up this book, and it was quite fun, I must say. The plot was straightforward, driven by the dungeon slowly levelling up, and Dale also levelling up and learning about the world of adventuring. The writing was straightforward, if not very nuanced, with some of the moral lessons necessary for Dale to mature being imparted to Dale in very much a “tell, not show” kind of a way. So if I were to be snobby, I’d say this wasn’t a sophisticated book, but all in all, it was entirely enjoyable, and kept me engaged throughout. I probably won’t be reading the follow-on books simply because this isn’t perhaps my favoured style of book, and I have only a limited number of books I can fit in, but but that’s just a personal thing, and others will love this, I know.

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The Poppy War

by R.F.Kuang

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The Poppy War is a fantasy novel with a difference. Most such novels are set in a sort-of Lord of The Rings lineage of countries, which all look a lot like medieval England (with greater or lesser degrees of grittiness, but with wizards, and of course lots of men with mighty thews and huge swords.

Instead, here we are in a country like medieval China, with shamans who are linked to sixty-four fantastical god-like creatures, and women with wicked martial arts skills – oh, plus a few mighty-thew’d warriors to round out the numbers. This does give the whole thing a very different flavour, which I have to say I enjoyed. The exploration of this culture, and the way the empires have grown (and are falling), was well done throughout, and definitely deserving of praise.

Better still for me was the main character, Ren, and the portrayal of her inner conflict between duty and vengeance, as she grows from fighting to survive, to fighting for her country, to fighting for her friends. It’s a great piece of character development. We see her start as a young war orphan in a shop in a rural village, then through sheer force of will and determination, we watch her pass the tough exams to attend the prestigious war college – her only way out of this life other than through an arranged marriage to a man 20+ years her senior. From there, we follow her through the college, and into the real war that breaks out before she’s had time to even graduate. It’s then, in many ways, that the really interesting action starts. I did feel a times though that this was a longer book than it might have needed to be, and perhaps some of the build up to this might have been judiciously edited down.

It’s worth warning that some of the writing in the battle scenes in the final third of the book is very dark. One of the themes of the book is about how when we cease to see the “other side” in a war has human, that (a) makes the war easier to fight for the soldiers, and (b) produces extraordinary brutality. You are treated to this in full. I think of myself as mentally quite robust, and am entirely used to high levels of gore in movies, etc, but this gave me some quite unpleasant dreams. Enough said.

So, overall I’m giving this 3-1/2 stars, rounded up to 4 stars. The novelty of the setting and the characters, plus the higher-level themes, elevated this above your normal fantasy novel. Just not for the faint of heart!

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Book review

The Fifth Season

The Broken Earth #1

by N.K.Jemisin

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Sometimes you read a book, and you’ve no idea what’s going on for the first third of the book, but then you put together a few threads through the middle third and you enjoy how it’s going, and by the final third you absolutely love it and are upset when it ends. This was such a book, and I loved it. Some of the rest of this review might need to be shrouded in spoilers, so you can have the same experience, but it’s clear very early on that we’re in a strange world here, with lots of history, and – it turns out – lots of earthquakes. Not all of which are triggered in the usual way. Turns out, there are some people in this world that can trigger earthquakes. Turns out there are those who can feel and control (to some extent) magma flows, the slippage of plates in the crust, the crumbling of rock, and other geological things whose names I didn’t know until I read this book. Really great world building – I can’t think I’ve read anything like this before. I can see why it won the 2016 Hugo Award!

Also, by the way, great storytelling throughout. The story unfolds from multiple points of view – a woman in deep distress, a second-person narrative, a strange creature born from the stone itself, and others. How they come together is the reveal of the middle section of the book. It’s a neat approach, and very well used, but not abused. No annoying super-powers wielded by super-humans, deus ex machina-style, but rather very human characters with flaws and strengths, struggling to come to terms with the world in which they find themselves.

SO, some great characters in here, a brilliant world setting for them, and an intriguing plot. It also has enough of a wrap-up at the end of the book for you to feel satisfied – you aren’t left poised on a cliff edge. Definitely want to see more from this world, though, and there is plenty enough left unfinished to justify reading the next book(s). A well-deserved five stars.






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Dangerous To Know

by K.T.Davies

I’m sorry to say I gave up on this after a couple of chapters. I could see that another day (and certainly to other readers) this might be an entertaining read, but I ended up getting annoyed by the fantasy swords-and-sorcery tropes, foreshadowing, and not terrifically well done dry humour.

I hate being mean about someone’s writing, because heaven knows it’s still better than I could manage, but I couple of years ago I realized that I only had a certain number of books I could read before I shuffle off this mortal coil, so I’d better make sure I didn’t waste my time. So I leave this to others, who, based on the consensus of the other GoodReads reviews, will enjoy it more.


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The Rook

The Checquy Files, #1

by Daniel O’Malley

The Rook by Daniel O'Malley

What a cracking book! I loved this supernatural/sci-fi combo, with the clever twist that the main character starts the book having completely lost her memory, finding herself standing in the dark in the rain, surrounded by several dead bodies, all of whom are wearing latex gloves. Through the excellent plot device of a series of notes that she’s left herself, she realises who she was and what her life was all about, and quite how much danger she is in.

Myfanwy, the lyrically named heroine, would love to find out what’s going on and how she came to lose her memory, but before she has time, she’s launched into a series of adventures with supernatural forces. For it becomes apparent that Myfanwy is a high-ranking member – a Rook – in a secret organisation called the Chequy, set up to battle the supernatural forces that threaten Britain.

There are some great characters in here, and some intriguing, and quite non-human, forces at play. To avoid spoilers, I won’t reveal too much, but it’s a great read. For me it had something of the vibe of Charles Stross’s Laundry Files series – supernatural creatures and goings on, which are hidden from us by a hidden quasi-governmental organisation. Written with humour and verve, and just a delight to read – hard to put down even late at night, leading to complaints from my better half that the backlighting on the kindle was keeping her awake…

I’ll definitely be picking up the next one in the series.

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Book review

The Invisible Library

by Genevieve Cogman

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Book review

Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
Read date: Feb 2017

4 stars

Three and three quarter stars, really, but rounded it up to four as it has potential for the rest of the series (and minus a quarter star for the cover art – I mean I know sex sells, and it’s fun, but it nearly put my wife off reading it, which would have been a shame as she loves them now!)

Quite a fun fantasy-in-the-modern-world story: you’ve got shapeshifters, werewolves, vampires, and the fae, all hiding in plain sight in the modern world. A slight twist in this world is that the fae – at least the “lesser” fae – have been outed, and their existence is known to us mundanes.

The plot is centred around Mercy Thompson, a shapeshifting car mechanic, and the troubles she gets into with the neighbourhood werewolves. Her next-door neighbour is the alpha of the pack, and tends to do things like leave Mercy’s pet cat on her doorstep with a note saying “please keep your cat off my lawn, or I might eat him”. Things get complicated when Mercy hires a drifter type to help out in the garage, who she quickly realises is a “lone wolf” werewolf, one without a pack.

The story is fun, with quite a lot of scene setting in the first half, but the pace picks up in the back half and I enjoyed the ride. I will definitely pick up the next one if I’m off on holiday and fancy an entertaining read on the beach!

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Book review

La Belle Sauvage

La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust, #1)
Read date: Feb 2019

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Philip Pullman is back, and it’s awesome! I read the original Pullman books when they first came out, but not since then, which means my memories of them are vague, and probably influenced by the movie (which was good, but the Armoured Bears and Zepplins of my imagination were way cooler).

La Belle Sauvage fairly rips along – I was gripped from the start, and found myself unable to put it down at various crucial junctures of the storyline. It centres around Malcolm, the young son of the owners of an inn to the north of Oxford, and you also meet some of the other characters from the series, such as Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter, although they play much smaller parts. I won’t give too many plot details because, spoilers, but I loved it all. It ends at a logical point, but as it’s the first in a trilogy, one is definitely left in anticipation of the next one, if only to enter the magical world once more.

This book is set in the same world as The Amber Spyglass series, but ten years earlier, with Lyra as a little baby. Malcolm is a young adult, and the writing in this book is straightforward and accessible. I’m sure this book would be enjoyed by younger people – my kids at that age would have loved it – but as with the other books in the sequence, it’s by no means YA fiction, with some complex themes opened up, and Pullman’s characteristically dark views of the established church firmly on display.

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The Devil You Know

The Devil You Know by Mike Carey
Read date: Jan 2019

Entertaining writing and interesting characters, all set in an alternate modern-day London where ghosts and ghouls started appearing to everyday folks in the 1990s, and society is still making adjustments to this new reality.

The hero, Felix Castor, a self-employed exorcist, is suitably flawed – very much in the vein of gumshoe private eyes of old. His slow change of approach towards his job throughout the book was a neat story arc, with him thinking more about ghosts and what the really are, and the implications for his job as he’s been doing it.

Meantime, Pen, his landlady-slash-support has a great backstory, hinted at rather than thrown open, so I’m sure we’ll see more of that in the future. And the appearance at the end of a new apprentice for Felix was a great setup for the next in the series.

The writing throughout was strong, with enough intelligent asides and references to make it a definite step above some others in the genre. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and will look out for others in the series, so a good four-star book for me.