Review: The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn

The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn by Tyler Whitesides
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The good: even when his plan is working (which it basically always is), Ardor Benn, ruse artist extraordinary, is often in fear for his life. I liked that trick, and will probably use it myself. It's like a yes-but, with the but being simultaneous with the yes rather than following on from it. And I always enjoy a daring and creative caper. The opening sequence promises lots of fun heist action; I decided to buy the book relatively early on, when chaos was breaking out all round and the characters were bickering, in the way that long-time friends do, about a part of the plan that hadn't been taken care of because the sidekick figured they'd improvise something when they got to it.

The mediocre: although pretty much all of the commas and all but a few of the apostrophes are in the right place, the copy editing has a lot of scruffiness to it. There are vocabulary issues (crevasse/crevice; hurtled/hurled; clamor/clamber; wretch/retch, plus a number of verbs that don't mean what the author thinks they mean, tense and number issues, an its/it's error, "may" instead of "might" in past tense narration, most of the usual problems). There are a number of dangling modifiers, and a good few mangled idioms. There's the common confusion between "royal" and "noble" (they're very different), and the king is addressed as "Your Highness" instead of "Your Majesty". It could be a lot tidier, relatively easily, if the author knew what he was about. I suspect that a copy editor who's good with punctuation but not with the issues I just mentioned might have worked very hard on it and missed some things because there was a lot to fix. Or maybe it just wasn't copy edited very thoroughly at all.

There's a bit too much infodumping about the magic system early on (there's a bit too much everything early on, after that madcap opening, to be honest; not much plot per thousand words at times). It's a Sandersonian setup, in which various materials, when passed through the digestive systems of dragons, blasted with dragon fire, and put through some more chemical and physical processing, become different types of magical "grit" with a perhaps-too-wide and not-always-credible range of powers (though it was fun to see them used in various combinations in the ruses). How these powers (and the extensive processing that enables them to be used) were discovered is not discussed. Also, I felt after the sequence in which the crew gets some material processed through a dragon that the difficulty of it all made it hard to believe that the grit was produced on an industrial scale. The core crew's plot armour was pretty obtrusive during that whole sequence, too.

The bad: there's a great big glaring plot hole that I will put in spoiler tags. (view spoiler)[The king goes to tremendous lengths to destroy all of the fertilized dragon eggshell and the grit that can be produced from it, and substitute fakes - except that the most accessible fertilized shell of all - his own regalia - is not substituted with a fake, or at least it's not until the crew steals it. They never even consider that he might have done so, and it never seems to occur to him either. And then this otherwise good and wise king's reason for doing all this underhanded and ill-considered stuff is... weak. (hide spoiler)]

This is only the most obvious instance of someone behaving, not in a way that makes sense for who they are and what drives them, but in a way that serves the plot and Ardor Benn's schemes. People give help (at personal risk) and offer information for no other reason than that the plot needs them to. The king lets Ardor into his presence and then lets him talk, for example, which is obviously a stupid move.

The way the existential threat that drives the whole story works was not that believable to me either. I expect to suspend some disbelief when reading a heist novel, but this one asked too much.

The whole thing gives the impression of being a trick that (unlike Ardor's ruses) doesn't quite come off, because the author's reach exceeds his grasp. Sadly, this isn't a new favourite series for me, and I won't be reading the remaining books. It had promise, and moments of brilliance, but it didn't gel as a truly polished, well-constructed whole.

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Review: A Grimoire for Gamblers

A Grimoire for Gamblers by Amanda Creiglow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A cut above the usual made-from-box-mix urban fantasy, with a sensible, capable (sometimes to the point of ruthlessness) protagonist. It's darker than I really prefer, with a number of tragic deaths of innocents that the protagonist has some unintentional responsibility for and is unable to prevent. The supernatural world is hostile and dangerous to a medieval degree, and only an extraordinarily gutsy move by the protagonist is able to resolve the plot.

There were some weaknesses and unanswered questions for me. For example, the voodoo train. Why would someone make that, and having made it, why would they leave it active, literally an accident waiting to happen?

I groaned when the handsome wizard with green eyes turned up, because that's the universal signal for a love interest, and the protagonist already had a boyfriend who seemed like a decent guy - by her account, anyway; he was absent elsewhere for almost the whole book, and even when he returned he felt like he didn't have much heft to him as a character. He functioned more as an aspect of the protag than a person in his own right. Hopefully the author will figure out what to do with him in future books in the series and give him his own independent reality. I hope he doesn't just become a genderflipped damsel in distress/hostage to fortune/motivating factor/fridge inhabitant. Anyway, the green-eyed-love-interest trope was invoked only to be averted, and I sincerely hope that continues.

The protagonist is smart, and a good problem solver, and while she narrates in a version of First Person Smartass, it's not overdone. She has some genuinely tough stuff to cope with, and does so bravely and resourcefully. I'm not sure if it's a Covid side-effect, a phenomenon whose time had come regardless, or just good luck or good management on my part, but I'm loving the fact that I'm finding so many really competent, pragmatic female protagonists lately.

I'll definitely be looking out for a sequel, though I hope the author manages to make more of the boyfriend next time.

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Review: The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this, for a few reasons.

First of all, it's wonderfully literate, and not just in the sense that the author is well-read and draws on lots of literature for her central concept. The prose is highly competent, the kind that I can just relax into and be carried along, knowing that any effect it creates is intentional, not accidental. Of course, this is what you'd expect from someone who has a PhD in English literature and lectures in English, but I've been surprised and disappointed before in this regard.

It doesn't quite make it to my "well-edited" shelf, though, for a couple of reasons. There are some words missed out of sentences that haven't been caught (that's hard to catch), and a few other minor glitches, including at least one continuity error; but more importantly, someone, presumably the editor at the US publishing house, has found it necessary to insert distinctively American turns of phrase like "he can come stay" into the mouth of the main narrator, a New Zealander who has lived in NZ his whole life and doesn't even mention knowing anyone who's American.

I didn't find too many other flaws, though. I loved the fact that the main narrator (there are a few chapters not from his first-person point of view) has a highly complicated relationship with his younger brother right from the start, the kind of complicated relationship one can only have with a sibling: wanting to protect him, resenting that he doesn't seem to need protection, then resenting when he does ask for help, but feeling obligated to provide it, meanwhile feeling guilty for that one thing more than a decade ago that they've never talked about, not wanting to say the hurtful thing but saying it anyway, and so forth. It gives the character a depth and realistic heft I don't often see in SFF.

That realism helps to ground the fantasy plot, which is based around the premise that some people can "read" characters out of books if they connect to the character in a certain way. Charlie, the younger brother of the narrator, has a particular talent for it; most people only do it occasionally in their lives and never realize, but he can do it consciously and deliberately (as well as more-or-less accidentally when distracted). A number of these fictional people feature, including the delightful Millie, who was a 1930s girl detective along the lines of Nancy Drew (but British) who escaped after being read out by Charlie when he was quite young, and has now grown to adulthood.

Along with various other book people, including five versions of Mr. Darcy (readers connect to him a lot), Millie lives in a fictional Victorian street hidden in the heart of Wellington, New Zealand. I enjoyed the Wellington parts, in which the city does that urban-fantasy thing of being a setting so vivid it's almost a character. I've only lived in Wellington myself for a few weeks once, while working on contract for a government department, but I like the city, and it's always good to see someone who clearly loves a place describe it.

The other slight weakness I noted is that how authentic the characters' dialog (and behaviour) is to their originals waxes and wanes quite a bit, based on whether they are being background colour or contributing directly to the plot and conveying important information. It would be very difficult to keep them all in character all the time and still have them move things along, though, so I forgive it. Also, they're not exactly the characters as written by the authors; they're readers' interpretations, which is quite a different thing (hence the five Darcys looking and acting somewhat different from each other).

Along with the enjoyable characters, setting, and premise, we get an exciting and suspenseful plot with plenty of mystery, conflict, high stakes, and personal significance to the characters.

All in all, it's a great ride, and I'm glad I came across it (though I can't remember where). Unfortunately, the author's other books sound too dark for me. Perhaps in time she'll write something more similar to this, a fun, dramatic romp with a strong serious side to it, like one of her main inspirations, Charles Dickens himself. It very nearly made me want to read David Copperfield, and that's quite an achievement considering how little I usually want to read classic literature.

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Review: Mary Quirk and the Twilight of Paso Cerrado

Mary Quirk and the Twilight of Paso Cerrado by Anna St. Vincent
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved the first book in the series and was keeping this as a treat to savour after I'd fulfilled some other reviewing obligations. Unfortunately, I was slightly disappointed, mostly because of the pacing and a couple of plot-driving coincidences.

It's not until the 81% mark that anything really dramatic happens, which for me is much too late. I know that Mary Quirk is a low-drama teenager, and that's great, but that doesn't mean that her books should be low-drama. The first 81% is taken up with a slow-burn mystery investigation which entirely consists of talking to people and getting small pieces of the puzzle; school mundanities; commendable (but not, in themselves, exciting) efforts to unify the class and bring in a new member, who's annoying but, thanks to Mary's accepting approach, not the cause of all that much conflict; slight progress on the slow-burn romance; and (especially early on) recaps of things that, in Book 1, gave us a fresh sensawunda, but now are just recaps.

By a startlingly obvious coincidence in which the hand of the author is starkly visible, Mary works out the mystery at exactly the point (81% through the book) that makes for the most drama. Any earlier, and the crisis wouldn't be as bad; any later, and the resolution of the crisis wouldn't be as good. But there is no internal reason for her to finally put all the clues together right at the moment that it will create that outcome. It's just "luck".

Then, later, she wakes up and joins the others at exactly the time that will enable her to participate in another dramatic moment - again, by complete coincidence.

So, for me, this failed to live up to the promise of the first book. I remain a fan, though, and hope that the third book will return to a more even dramatic pacing and make less obvious use of coincidence to serve the plot.

Disclaimer: I know the author slightly (under another name) on the Codex writers' forum. I purchased the book, though, and am reviewing it on my own initiative.

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