Tag: Fantasy

Book: “An Enchantment of Ravens” by Margaret Rogerson

Publishing Info: Margaret K. McElderry Books, September 2017

Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from ALA

Book Description: Isobel is a prodigy portrait artist with a dangerous set of clients: the sinister fair folk, immortal creatures who cannot bake bread, weave cloth, or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and Isobel’s paintings are highly prized among them. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—she makes a terrible mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes – a weakness that could cost him his life.

Furious and devastated, Rook spirits her away to the autumnlands to stand trial for her crime.

Review: This was an ARC that I nabbed at ALA purely because of the beautiful color and my vague guess that it was probably some type of fairytale…maybe? Honestly, ALA is such a mad house that I don’t think I even got around to reading the book description until I was back in my hotel. But man, what luck! This story was one giant mash-up of all of my favorite things about fairtyales: a relatable heroine, a hilarious and charming hero, and the darker side of magic.

In Isobel’s village, fairies are common customers. Humans possess the ability to make Craft, construct things out of materials, something that is deadly to fairies, and thus fascinating to these long-lived beings. Isobel is a prodigy portrait artist, and as such, as worked with fairies most of her teenage life, becoming quite familiar with the quirks and dangers of these people. In exchange for her work, she is paid with magical favors, like chickens that produce a certain number of eggs each week. But in every fairy gift, there lurks the potential for disaster, so Isobel has gotten quite skilled at carefully wording every request she makes. More so than other in her village, she understands that even the ultimate fairy gift, a drink from the Green Well which grants immortality and is reserved for only the most special cases of humans who posses Crafting talent over and beyond the usual and who come along maybe once every century, is not all its cracked up to be. So when whisked away by an unhappy fairy prince client, Isobel knows that her trip to the fairy realms is rife with potential disaster.

Isobel herself was one of my favorite parts of this book. From the very beginning, we see that she has grown wise through her experience with the fairies. She doesn’t trust them and sees the loss that immortality has inflicted upon them. They can’t seem to relate to others or feel real emotion about anything. In fact, the presence of emotion is what makes Rook stand out to her, and the painting of it is what gets her carried away. And even then, trapped in the fairy world with a volatile prince, Isobel never loses her head. The relationship she develops with Rook over their travels develops in a natural way and Isobel always retains her common sense about the dangers this is presenting to both her and him, since relationships between humans and fairies are forbidden.

Rook, too, was exactly the type of romantic hero I love. He’s lovably arrogant about his own kind, a trait that both amuses and exasperates Isobel. There were several laugh out loud moments for him throughout the story. He’s also given a strong backstory to justify the differences between him and the other fairies. But never loses his inherent “otherness.”

As readers of this blog know, my favorite fantasy stories often mix a good dash of darkness and horror into the story (see: “The Beast is an Animal”). Here, the fairy court is like a brilliant confectionery cake, but once you cut into it, you see the mold. Time has not been kind to beings who live forever. There is madness, isolation, and loneliness mixed behind every aspect of the fairy realm.  At the center of it is the Summer King, the ruler of the fairies, who has withdrawn from the world, but whose madness lurks and has begun to trickle into the human world as well.

For a fairytale not directly tied to re-telling any of the tales we are familiar with, “An Enchantment of Ravens” reads as a staple in the genre. Magic, adventure, danger, comedy, and romance are all balanced in this story, held together by two protagonists you quickly grow to love. I can’t recommend this enough to fans of fairytale retellings!

Rating 9: What a wonderful surprise! Sometimes judging a book by its cover has a massive upside!

Reader’s Advisory:

“An Enchantment of Ravens” is on these Goodreads lists: “Traveling in the Faerie Realms” and “Dark Fairy Tales.”

Find “An Enchantment of Ravens” at your library using WorldCat!

Book: “Flame in the Mist” by Renee Andieh

Publishing Info: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, May 2016

Where Did I Get this Book: e-ARC from NetGalley!

Book Description: The only daughter of a prominent samurai, Mariko has always known she’d been raised for one purpose and one purpose only: to marry. Never mind her cunning, which rivals that of her twin brother, Kenshin, or her skills as an accomplished alchemist. Since Mariko was not born a boy, her fate was sealed the moment she drew her first breath.

So, at just seventeen years old, Mariko is sent to the imperial palace to meet her betrothed, a man she did not choose, for the very first time. But the journey is cut short when Mariko’s convoy is viciously attacked by the Black Clan, a dangerous group of bandits who’ve been hired to kill Mariko before she reaches the palace.

The lone survivor, Mariko narrowly escapes to the woods, where she plots her revenge. Dressed as a peasant boy, she sets out to infiltrate the Black Clan and hunt down those responsible for the target on her back. Once she’s within their ranks, though, Mariko finds for the first time she’s appreciated for her intellect and abilities. She even finds herself falling in love—a love that will force her to question everything she’s ever known about her family, her purpose, and her deepest desires.

Review: Right off the bat, there were several things going for this book when I first saw that it was coming out. First and foremost, I had very much liked Abdieh’s previous YA fantasy duology, a re-telling of “One Thousand and One Nights, “The Wrath and the Dawn” and “The Rose and the Dagger.” Together they made up a unique re-telling of one of the few remaining fairytales that hasn’t been beaten into the ground (this coming from an avid fan of fairytale re-tellings), and the style of writing appealed to me with its lyrical quality. “Flame in the Mist” had the same elements. To its detriment.

I want to applaud the author, however, for sticking to her guns in choosing lesser known stories and focusing her world-building and characters on non-European/western settings and cultures. Here we have what is essentially a “Mulan” re-telling set in a proto-Asian setting. I don’t have a wealth of knowledge of Chinese/Japanese/etc cultures, so I can’t speak to those aspects of the book (similar to my lack of knowledge of the “realism” of the Middle Eastern setting used in her previous duology). However, both that series and this are set in fantasy worlds, for all their similarities, so outside of blatant issues (which there were none that I could tell), there was a lot of free reign to build a completely new world order/culture with this story. This was one aspect of the story that I really enjoyed. It was refreshing to read a fantasy story that takes place in an eastern setting. This left not only the fantasy elements to learn and to explore, but also the immersive quality of being quite outside my own culture, while still having threads to tie back to what little I do already know of the regions of the world that this story draws from. Full marks for world building.

Unfortunately, that leads me to the rest of the story, all of which I had more issues with. First off, I feel that, as a reader, I would have been better served having this book not presented to me as a “Mulan” re-telling. For better or worse, my knowledge of that story is pretty well tied up with the Disney version. I know the story is based on a traditional Chinese fairytale of a young woman who dresses and fights as a man, but I haven’t read it and couldn’t even speak to the accuracy of Mulan. So…Disney’s all I’ve got with this one. And as far as this book goes I got far too little of this:

And far too much of this:

One of the things that made Disney!Mulan’s story appealing were the noble and, most importantly in this case, understandable reasons for why she does what she does. Her hand is quite literally forced, for love of her father and nothing more. Sure, she feels out of place in her own skin and that she is letting her family down, but she never contemplates abandoning home until the situation with her father being called to war comes to play. Not so with Mariko.

For all intents and purposes, Mariko is quite acceptable as a daughter. Sure she’s frustrated and angered by the fact that she is being traded away in marriage, but alas, such is the life she was born to lead. In the short introduction we are given to her character before the action sets in, we are given every reason to think that Mariko is above all a practical and dutiful daughter. These are traits she prides herself in. But then her caravan is attacked, her guards and maid killed, and she finds herself wandering around in the woods alone. And this is where I first knew there were going to be issues for me with this book. Mariko rightly worries that her situation is going to be problematic for her family to explain; when/if she returns home, her virtue could be called into question due to this, and through this, her family’s honor. What is to be done? Obviously, running away, disguising herself as a boy, and tracking down those who attacked her so that she can save her virtue. Somehow.

I’m a fantasy reader, I’m more than happy to turn my brain off and go on many an adventure where implausible things happen. But only so far as the world allows. This type of blatant, plot-serving faulty logic drives me bonkers. How in the world could dressing up as a boy and hanging out with a bunch of (male!) thieves improve her chances of retaining her family’s honor and her own virtue? Nothing about it makes sense. And unfortunately, this type of backwards thinking continues for Mariko throughout the story. She sometimes even made the right decision, but made it for such the wrong reason that I couldn’t even give her credit for it.

Beyond this, I’ve found that in this, the third book I’ve read by this author, the writing is starting to get on my nerves. What came off as lyrical and appropriate in the previous duology, read as strained and forced here. Perhaps the focus on storytelling that was at the center of the other two books simply lent itself better to this type of writing, and now, removed from that topic, it simply felt awkward. It’s hard to even describe, really, as sentence-by-sentence there’s nothing wrong with the writing. But as I kept reading, it just kind of built up as an annoyance, and enough of one that I repeatedly found myself putting the book down.

“The Flame in the Mist” was not for me. I could never get behind Mariko as a main character with her blatantly contradictory thought process and decision making, and the more dramatic and lyrical writing style seemed to rub uncomfortably with this more action-oriented tale. For those looking for a good woman/warrior story, pull out the classic “Alanna” series instead. Or, hey, check out the “Bloodbond” series that I recently finished up and loved.

Rating 4: My expectations were too high for this wanna-be-Mulan story.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Flame in the Mist” is included on these Goodreads lists: “SF & F Atlas – Asia” and “Fairytales for Wild Girls.”

Find “Flame in the Mist” at your library using WorldCat!

 

Book: “Julia Vanishes” by Catherine Egan

Publishing Info: Doubleday Canada, June 2016

Where Did I Get this Book: audiobook from the library!

Book Description: Julia has the unusual ability to be . . . unseen. Not invisible, exactly. Just beyond most people’s senses.

It’s a dangerous trait in a city that has banned all forms of magic and drowns witches in public Cleansings. But it’s a useful trait for a thief and a spy. And Julia has learned–crime pays.

Her latest job is paying very well indeed. Julia is posing as a housemaid in the grand house of Mrs. Och, where an odd assortment of characters live and work: A disgraced professor who sends her to fetch parcels containing bullets, spiders, and poison. An aristocratic houseguest who is locked in the basement each night. And a mysterious young woman who is clearly in hiding–though from what or whom?

Worse, Julia suspects that there’s a connection between these people and the killer leaving a trail of bodies across the frozen city.

The more she learns, the more she wants to be done with this unnatural job. To go back to the safety of her friends and fellow thieves. But Julia is entangled in a struggle between forces more powerful than she’d ever imagined. Escape will come at a terrible price.

Review: This book is a strange combination of a million and one elements that shouldn’t work together, but somehow, do! We’ve got an “Ocean’s Eleven” style thieves guild, essentially, operating in a world that is similar to our own, but at an undefined period of time (there are carriages, but also “electric” carriages, people use swords, but there are also muskets, at one point they use an elevator in a building, but they also sail their boats…), There is an inquisition-style hunt going on for witches, but there are also other magical beings that are thought only to exist in folklore. And in the middle of the story we’re presented with an entire new level of world-building with the introduction of a new set of beings with a god-like relation to history and current events.

Throughout this all, what holds things together is Julia, her narrative style and individual character arc. Julia, and her brother Dek (the spelling of character names/places is always confusing when you listen to an audiobook and never see the name spelled out! Ah, the challenges of book reviews!), are the orphaned children of a father who drank and then abandoned what remained of his family when their mother is convicted and executed as a witch. They are taken in by Esme, a woman who runs a successful thieves underground system, and grow up working jobs for this new family. Which all leads to the current circumstance that places Julia, requested by the client for her unique ability to go “unseen” by others when she chooses, as a spy in the household of Mrs. Och and thus caught up in complicated mystery that surrounds the young woman and her toddler son who are taking refuge there.

Julia’s growth through the story was one of its strongest appeals. Not only does she not understand her own abilities, especially when she discovers there is more to them then simply becoming invisible for a bit, but her own world views, and her understanding of her place in it, are consistently challenged. I particularly enjoyed the parallel that is drawn between Julia and another character, Pia, and the example they each set for the consequences that come from making the choices we do in life. Julia, at first, has a very pragmatic approach to her life and her work. She does the job, she gets paid. And this is a comfortable arrangement, allowing her to morally set herself back from her own actions. But when this approach comes to a head in the middle of the book, Julia must question her own definition of “living.”

While Julia’s is obviously the main arc of the story, I also appreciated the other views into poverty and the choices that are available to those struggling to get by that are presented by the other characters. Her brother, Dek, is a talented inventor, but due to their status as orphans and thieves, and his own deformities from a childhood illness, he worries about every being financially compensated if he came forward in an attempt to sell his goods. Another character, Wyn, hopes to be an artist, but struggles to get his foot in the door with an apprenticeship or a place in an art program. Again and again, we see these characters have doors shut in their faces and can understand the comfort that comes from the stability found in their role in this thieves guild, even if the work itself is morally questionable.

As for the story itself and the world-building, I was very surprised when about halfway through the book the plot suddenly expanded massively to include world-changing characters and events. Before it had been a rather simple murder mystery with a strange monster and a mysterious woman with a past. Suddenly these were all small pieces in a much larger moving plot machine. While I liked these expanded elements, they did seem to come out of the blue, forcing the entire story to shift completely, resolving some of the initial elements suddenly in the middle of the story while introducing new ones at the same time. It almost felt like two completely different books. I think this was simply a matter of pacing and of a few info-dumpy passages that were overwhelming. Ultimately, things did become clear, but there was a bit in the middle where I was honestly confused about who was after who and why.

The story does resolve itself for the most part in this book, however the door is clearly left open for sequels. Now that the cards are shown, per se, about the grander conflict going on in the series, I have hopes that any future books would be more settled in their own skin with what story they are wanting to tell. I was also given just enough of Julia’s abilities and origins to keep me coming back for the second book to find more answers alongside her. “Julia Defiant” will be up shortly, I suspect!

Rating 7: A great main character and interesting new world. But it felt like two books mashed together at times, with one focused on a simple monster story and the other setting up larger-than-life characters and plots.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Julia Vanishes” isn’t on any relevant Goodreads lists, but it should be on “Fantasy Books about Thieves.”

Find “Julia Vanishes” at your library using WorldCat!

 

Book: “A Conspiracy of Kings” by Megan Whalen Turner

Publishing Info: Greenwillow Books/HarperCollins Publishers, March 2010

Where Did I Get this Book: audiobook from the library!

Book Description: Sophos, under the guidance of yet another tutor, practices his swordplay and strategizes escape scenarios should his father’s villa come under attack. How would he save his mother? His sisters? Himself? Could he reach the horses in time? Where would he go? But nothing prepares him for the day armed men, silent as thieves, swarm the villa courtyard ready to kill, to capture, to kidnap. Sophos, the heir to the throne of Sounis, disappears without a trace.

In Attolia, Eugenides, the new and unlikely king, has never stopped wondering what happened to Sophos. Nor has the Queen of Eddis. They send spies. They pay informants. They appeal to the gods. But as time goes by, it becomes less and less certain that they will ever see their friend alive again.

Across the small peninsula battles are fought, bribes are offered, and conspiracies are set in motion. Darkening the horizon, the Mede Empire threatens, always, from across the sea. And Sophos, anonymous and alone, bides his time. Sophos, drawing on his memories of Gen, Pol, the Magus and Eddis, sets out on an adventure that will change all of their lives forever.

Review: After blazing through the first three books in this series last fall, I decided I needed to pump the brakes so I could stand the wait until the fifth book’s publication this spring. Delayed gratification and all of that. But by now the next book has dropped, I’m on the waiting list at my library, and it’s time to finally catch up with the last book in the series to this point.

One thing that I have commented about in all of the previous books in this series, is the way the author plays where her narrator and narrative method. For a series that has such a strong character as Gen, it’s a brave choice to focus the story on periphery characters and leave your star player benched, essentially, for large chunks of the story. Here, she takes an even bolder risk by throwing the story into the hands of Sophos, a character who played a large role in the plot of the first book “The Thief” but has been entirely absent, apart from random asides, throughout the rest of the series.  He was an interesting enough character there, but it is always hard to tell how truly compelling any character is on their own when they’re working of the character of Gen who seems to draw out the best parts of many characters. So if you’d asked me whether I was interested in an entire book seen through his eyes and regarding his struggles with family and kingship, I’d probably have been like “…meh?” But, as usual, I should never have doubted!

One of the few things I remembered about Sophos as a character was his crippling insecurity. Here, after the events of “The Thief” and back in his home country under a new tutor, we can see why he struggles with this. His father is completely disappointed in him as a son and heir and never misses an opportunity to rub this fact in. So in many ways this is a story of self-discovery and self-confidence, all wrapped beneath an action packed plot. After Sophos’ family is attacked and he is sold into slavery, he finds himself completely alone in the world, and, for the first time, anonymous. How can he escape his current situation and re-claim his throne? And, more importantly, does he even want to?

As I mentioned earlier, Whalen Turned doesn’t just change up narrators between books, but she also changes the way she tells the story. Here, very early on, it is clear that Sophos is relating his experience to a listener, but it is not clear who that listener was. This plot device was both interesting and endlessly frustrating as I kept coming up with guesses for who he was talking to and the purpose of telling the story the way he was.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that yes, he eventually does meet up with Gen, Attolia, and, most importantly Eddis again. As leaders of their own countries, each are valuable allies for the displaced Sophos. But much has happened since he last left them, most importantly the upstart theif Gen is now King of Attolia. And Eddis…he’s not quite sure where he stands with her. I loved seeing all of these characters through the eyes of Sophos who has been gone for much of the series and missed the progression of change that we the readers have had time to come to terms with. Further, all three rulers have different approaches to what it means to lead a country and how they go about it. I loved the insights they each provided Sophos as he began to realize the depth of the decisions before him.

The only thing that knocks this book down from a perfect score is the complicated politics of the regions. And I even hesitate to mention it because this aspect of the series is also one that makes it stand out and has been one of the draws for me as a reader. And it still is here. However, there were times when the plans and actions of the characters were confusing to me and I had to re-read portions to fully understand how everyone knew what when. But, like I said, I’d rather things be more complicated than be spoon-fed the plot, so take this “criticism” how you will.

Surprising no one, I loved this book. And surprising no one, all the doubts I had going in where laid fully to rest. I will now go back to obsessively refreshing my library hold account page to see if the line of people before me is dwindling for the next book “Thick as Thieves.”

Rating 9: Another great entry in a great series!

Reader’s Advisory:

“A Conspiracy of Kings” is on these Goodreads lists: “Political themed YA fiction” and “Royalty.”

Find “A Conspiracy of Kings” at your library using WorldCat!

Previously Reviewed: “The Thief” and “The Queen of Attolia” and “The King of Attolia”