Review: The Shadow Revolution

The Shadow Revolution by Clay Griffith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A promising start to a series which advertises itself as "Victorian urban fantasy"; it's not that steampunky, though there is a steam-powered motorcycle, but if you love steampunk this may also appeal to you.

The characters are vivid and individual enough that I didn't feel I'd read it all before. The editing, while certainly not flawless, is mostly decent.

There is one trope that I particularly dislike in this type of book (PNR, urban fantasy, steampunk, or period adventure romance, take your pick): the heroine gets captured by the villain and has to be rescued by the hero. That trope occurs here, but it's subverted just enough that the authors (for me) get away with it; for one thing, she wasn't captured because she did something idiotic, and she remains as effectual as one reasonably could while in that situation.

While there are hints of romance, there's nothing overt yet, so I imagine there'll be a relatively slow burn through the rest of the series, and while that's a visible thread, it isn't front and centre. The A plot is definitely thwarting the plans of the villain and defeating the werewolves, and it's done with a combination of good fight scenes, clever magic, bravery, and determination on the part of the characters. The main characters change and develop, and in general it's a well-crafted book.

The next one is a bit expensive for my blood, so I will put it on my Await Ebook Price Drop wishlist and wait. They're good, but they're not so amazing I'll pay twice what I usually do.

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Review: They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded by James Alan Gardner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the first in this series very much; this one a bit less, primarily because of the main character. It was very skillfully done, though, and entertaining.

It needed to be skillful, because the author saddled himself with some drawbacks. His characters are all excessively powerful, with several unrelated superpowers, each of which on its own would be enough for many superheroes. The main character of this book, Jools, is "human maximum" in any ability you can name (with exceptions I'll note in a moment); has some sort of internet connection in her head that feeds her detailed knowledge of basically anything that's publicly online (including, oddly, the time and location of a secret party that certainly is not public knowledge); and her body regenerates, Wolverine-style.

I said there were some exceptions to her "maximum human ability" thing. Someone that powerful needs flaws, and Jools' flaw is that she's not the human maximum in wisdom, self-control, or for that matter likeability; in those areas, she's about average for a college-age alcoholic hockey player. In D&D terms, her intelligence, dexterity, strength, constitution and even (in certain circumstances) charisma may all be 18, but her wisdom is somewhere around six.

She is, at least, self-aware about it, and does get an arc, which rescued the book for me. In the meantime, I was kept entertained by observations such as "it’s like stashing matter and antimatter in the same suppository. Hilarity ensues," or (from one of her also-superpowered roommates, a chemistry major) "Biology is only chemistry that thinks it’s special."

A less skilled writer, working with such a character (both overpowered and annoyingly flawed at once), might have made all kinds of missteps, but Gardner pulls it off. His world, in which the ultra-rich have become literal vampires, werewolves, and demons, and superheroes known as "sparks" are gifted with powers by the Light to keep them more or less honest, continues to be entertaining, the plot is action-packed without being a bunch of stupid fights for the sake of it, and while Jools teeters on the edge of "annoyingly angsty screw-up" a few times, she does manage to tilt over to the heroic side by the end.

It seems that this series is going to get one book entirely from the point of view of each of the four roommates, which means that there's not a lot of insight into the others' heads (though that may change when we reach the telepath, I suppose). The other roommates risked becoming cyphers in Jools' somewhat self-absorbed world, even Kim/K/Zircon, who was the narrator of the first book. The whole may end up more than the sum of its parts, though, and I'll definitely be watching eagerly for the next one.

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Review: The Librarians and the Pot of Gold

The Librarians and the Pot of Gold by Greg Cox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is entertaining, and it does what I expected it to do; it's reasonably faithful to the TV series - which is cheesy, but in a way I mostly enjoy - and tells an enjoyable story in a brisk, old-fashioned pulpy style.

By "old-fashioned" I mean that it's adjective-heavy, and has a tendency to "said bookisms" (people "exposit" and "react" rather than just saying things). Some of the sentences, at least in the pre-publication version I read from Netgalley, are long and meandering, and there are a few glaring anachronisms; most notably, the leprechaun in the fifth century is already wearing traditional 18th-century Irish garb, and playing a fiddle (invented more than a thousand years later). There are signs, too, of the writing being done in a hurry, which hopefully will be fixed before publication.

Don't expect literature. Do expect pretty much what you'd get from an episode of the show.

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Review: The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye

The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye by Michael McClung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So much suffering.

So many, many coordinate commas that don't belong (and more than a few typos, vocabulary stumbles, and other punctuation errors).

For both of the above reasons, I enjoyed this less than the first book in the series. It's still good - we still have a motivated protagonist in a dynamic situation, with plenty of skill, determination, and a strong desire to contain a powerful threat to innocents. Amra is a great character, and I'd watch her do her laundry, let alone take on dysfunctional gods and monsters.

I'll perhaps be a little slower to pick up book 3, though, given the amount of torture the author puts her through in this one. Certainly I want to see a character struggle, but as a matter of personal taste, I don't want to see her suffer for suffering's sake, or just to demonstrate how very dark the world is.

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Review: The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye

The Thief Who Spat In Luck's Good Eye by Michael McClung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So much suffering.

So many, many coordinate commas that don't belong (and more than a few typos, vocabulary stumbles, and other punctuation errors).

For both of the above reasons, I enjoyed this less than the first book in the series. It's still good - we still have a motivated protagonist in a dynamic situation, with plenty of skill, determination, and a strong desire to contain a powerful threat to innocents. Amra is a great character, and I'd watch her do her laundry, let alone take on dysfunctional gods and monsters.

I'll perhaps be a little slower to pick up book 3, though, given the amount of torture the author puts her through in this one. Certainly I want to see a character struggle, but as a matter of personal taste, I don't want to see her suffer for suffering's sake, or just to demonstrate how very dark the world is.

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Review: Stealing Life

Stealing Life by Antony Johnston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting, and sometimes uncomfortable, blend of sword-and-sorcery (thieves, wizards, city-states controlled by criminals) with a futuristic setting. For a long while, I kept stumbling over the futuristic parts, because the essence of the book is so sword-and-sorcery in tone, feel, and trope.

The main character is a thief with some principles, specifically against killing, which lands him in trouble and in debt to a mob boss. This gives us a highly motivated protagonist in a dynamic situation, and things keep getting worse and worse for him, while the stakes for him and everyone else escalate - a good basis for compelling fiction.

Ultimately, he's not able to purge the corruption in the system, only to minimise its impact on innocents. But he does so with intelligence and daring, at personal cost, without ever blaming anyone else for his misfortune, and that makes up to a large degree for the cynicism and darkness of the setting. It's maybe a little worldweary to be fully noblebright, but it's tending strongly enough in that direction that I enjoyed it considerably.

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Review: The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids

The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A classic sword-and-sorcery tale of thieves and wizards, but with a touch more idealism than the sometimes nihilist genre often displays. The titular thief, despite a disadvantaged background, a hard life, and a generally pragmatic outlook, manages to hold onto some principles; she doesn't kill unless she absolutely has to (and only those who really deserve it), she doesn't steal from anyone who has less than her, friendship means a lot to her, and she never gives up.

I have had this sitting on my Kindle for a long time, put off by the starting premise: the main character's friend is horribly murdered. When I got past that, though, the book presented me with a motivated character in a dynamic situation - a well-realised character who I could admire, despite her criminality - and that swept me all the way to the end.

I jounced over some typos on the way, but they weren't enough to dent my enjoyment much. I almost immediately picked up the sequel.

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Review: Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds

Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A typically over-the-top Sanderson premise: a man hallucinates, and knows that he hallucinates, other people who possess knowledge and skills that he does not have conscious access to. He's perfectly sane; but his "aspects" have all kinds of psychological problems.

The author hints pretty clearly in his introduction that this is based on his own experience as an author - that his own characters help to keep him sane, by being safe carriers of his issues, as well as being able to do things that he can't. He takes the idea in some fun, interesting, and ultimately thought-provoking directions.

I've seen Sanderson dismissed as being merely the ultimate commercial writer, following the market's demands and expectations, but he's much more than that. Not only does he have wildly original ideas and develop them in ways that nobody else would think of, but there's a degree of emotional and psychological depth to his recent work in particular that isn't found in many authors. He hand-crafts his books, he doesn't stamp them out of a mould. While the first in these three connected novels shows the central character as a kind of superpowered detective, the following two increasingly follow his psychological struggles and internal, as well as external, challenges, and bring out philosophical questions while not neglecting action and conflict. The collection ends with a complex, but hopeful, conclusion.

I'd already read the original novella, I think in a collection, and eagerly requested this version via Netgalley when I saw it there. Thanks to the publisher for granting my request; it's one of the best books I've read this year.

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Review: Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven

Harley Merlin and the Secret Coven by Bella Forrest
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Started out well, and I thought it was going to be both well-edited and fairly original. Sadly, in the end it was neither. Enjoyable enough, but barely a four-star.

Firstly, it's based much too closely on Harry Potter, up to and including points for an end-of-year prize and childish bickering (if anything, the HP kids are more mature than these characters).

Second, there are quite a few excess coordinate commas, and a good few vocabulary issues - homonym errors (like diffuse/defuse); wrong word choices for what the author means; and one of my pet hates, the jargon "going forward" repeatedly used to mean "in future" or "from now on".

Third, there are two - TWO - Convenient Eavesdrops, and even though neither one is completely essential to the plot, I still despise this plot device with a mighty hatred. It's weak writing, a convenient way to get around point-of-view limitations.

It's OK in a bubblegum sort of way, enjoyable for what it is, but it doesn't inspire me to look for more from this author.

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Review: Eye of Truth

Eye of Truth by Lindsay Buroker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The classic Buroker elements are here: banter; steam conveyances; political intrigue which the characters are not so much engaging in as victims of; two people who appear confident but are privately full of doubts, and who look set to have a slow-burn romance; magic, here a bit more front-and-centre than usual. Another new element is the presence of elves and dwarves.

Somehow, though, the whole thing didn't quite come together for me. I enjoyed it well enough, but I wasn't so entertained or gripped that I am rushing out to buy the sequel. Perhaps the formula has become too formulaic.

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