Review: Claws and Contrivances

Claws and Contrivances by Stephanie Burgis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the first in this series, featuring the sister of this one's heroine, and this book is equally fun. It does stretch plausibility to the utmost in order that certain revelations can come at dramatic moments; the hero doesn't realise for 75% of the book that the heroine is the person he has a letter for (from her sister, updating her on the events of Book 1), because he gets her surname wrong and she never quite finishes correcting him in the course of their hectic conversations in the middle of various crises, and even when he does figure it out, he doesn't actually give her the letter until the 92% mark, because he doesn't want to distract her from her plans to foil the villain. There are always reasons for these unlikely delays and miscommunications - it's not just "so the plot can happen" - but it did strain my suspension of disbelief almost to the breaking point. It makes for a fun plot, though, and I forgive it.

Apart from one "into" that should be "in to" (yes, it matters), I spotted no mechanical errors apart from the fact that, by my count, there should be 26 fewer commas than there are - mostly between adjectives, because hardly anyone knows the coordinate comma rule. This doesn't quite count as "well edited" by my standards, but it's close. The Regency setting, as in the first book, feels more authentic than most Regency romances (despite the presence of small dragons with magic powers); it's not just 21st-century people shoved into crinolines. But, again as with the first book, the form the hero's admiration takes for the heroine - listening to her seriously and respecting her abilities - is modern, while also feeling like it fits into the time period. By the way, that's also a much healthier standard of interaction between hero and heroine than you'll find in the average Regency romance (or, probably, the average romance of any period, including contemporary; I mostly restrict my romance reads to Regency, fantasy, or, as in this case, both, so I can't say this for sure, but that's the impression I've gained).

The plot is a delight, lurching from one crisis to another, mostly caused by the characters being who they are: the heroine is principled and devoted to looking after others ahead of herself, the hero principled and absent-minded, the heroine's cousins include an airhead dramatic fan of Gothic romance and a bluff and confident and basically out lesbian (inasmuch as you could be an out lesbian in the early 19th century), and the villain is an avaricious and manipulative rake. The dragons are cute, the resolution is satisfying, and I look forward to the third book.

I'm confident that there will be a third book, because there's a third sister, the earnest but dreamy mathematician Harry. I thought when I finished the first book that she would be paired with the hero of this book, the earnest but dreamy dragon expert Mr Aubrey, but I now see that the author is smarter than I am; that would have been too much dreaminess all in one place. The hero of the first book has a handsome brother, who I initially thought would end up with the heroine of this book, so... we shall see.

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Review: Bookshops & Bonedust

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an unusual one: a prequel (to Legends & Lattes that has the main character in common, shows how she obtained the sword that is a minor but significant symbol of her old life in Legends, but has basically no other overlap apart from the epilogue. They're set 20 years apart, and certainly that's enough time to fall out of touch with people when you're a travelling mercenary, so it's plausible enough.

Mechanically, it's to mostly a good standard, with a few small flaws. There are a couple of dangling modifiers, and the usual excess commas between adjectives (very few authors or editors seem to have a good grip on the coordinate comma rule); the seaside inn is named after a freshwater fish (The Perch), there are a couple of mentions of a "passenger frigate" when a frigate is specifically a warship, and the author writes "wrangle" where he means "wangle". In the scheme of things, this, and a couple of other even less significant glitches, are nothing compared to the mess in most of the books I read. It's well crafted overall.

Although it's mostly cosy fantasy, it isn't just a low-stakes slice-of-life idyll. It could easily have gone that way; Viv, the protagonist, is a mercenary in a sword-and-sorcery world, but she's recovering from an injury in a quiet town. It could have just been about her developing friendship with the owner of the local second-hand bookshop, her discovery of the joys of reading, and her awkward romance, acknowledged from the outset to be short-term, with the baker. That probably would have worked fine for many readers (though not all), but the author gives us a bonus subplot with the threat of the necromancer that Viv's party was pursuing when she was wounded, and a creation of hers who becomes an important character. There is (eventually) action, though Viv's status as a mercenary is always in the picture, reminding us that action is a possibility.

For me, this blend worked, alongside the strong work developing not only the various characters but also the relationships between them. It's more intelligent and definitely more sentimental (in, for my taste, a good way) than the average sword-and-sorcery tale, but also more suspenseful and exciting than the average slice-of-life cosy. It's not, in its own terminology, "moist"; although Viv reads several romances that are implied to be explicit, there's nothing explicit in the book itself, and we're left to fill in our own interpretation of whether or not her romance with the baker ever progressed beyond kissing.

It has enough development of the characters, enough reflection on life, and enough touches of beautifully-phrased but not self-indulgent language to make it to the Gold tier of my 2024 Best of the Year list.

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Review: Sargassa

Sargassa by Sophie Burnham
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

Another case of "well written but not for me."

It's dystopian, which is not a genre I enjoy, and it also features the kind of characters who you always feel are about to make a terrible decision that will plunge everything into tragedy, which I also don't enjoy. That's about taste, not quality; the author writes well, the mechanics are unusually good, and the premise (the Roman Empire somehow survived and, as far as I can make out, colonized North America; I think that's where we are), but it just isn't the right book for this reader.

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Review: The Copper Box

The Copper Box by J.S. Fletcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An unusual mystery story from 1923; there's no murder, and, indeed, no crime at all, and the viewpoint character doesn't solve the mystery that there is, and yet I found it a satisfying journey. There's a romance thread that doesn't get enough development to rise to the level of a subplot, even though it's important to the conclusion, but it's no less developed than plenty of romances in books of this period, and at least the couple spend enough time together to make it somewhat plausible that they know each other well enough for a successful relationship.

There are a few chance meetings between the viewpoint character and several other characters that serve to facilitate the progress of the plot, but it's reasonably credible that they would happen to be in the same place at the same time, so I haven't given it the "plot relies on coincidence" tag; and while the hero doesn't solve the mystery, he does protagonize, so I'm not going to tag it as a "main character lacks agency" story either.

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Review: Little Rays of Moonshine

Little Rays of Moonshine by A.P. Herbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A collection of good-naturedly facetious pieces, most of which originally appeared in Punch. I can tell that there are a lot of topical references that I'm not getting (not knowing the society and politics of Britain around 1920 in the same detail as someone who lived there), but I still found them amusing. I especially enjoyed the piece in which Herbert proposed songs along the lines of the Labour movement's The Red Flag for other political parties; the Tories' one is to the same tune and called The White Spat.

Occasional use of language that, a century later, is considered offensive.

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Review: Cursed Under London

Cursed Under London by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An unconvincing and under-utilized Elizabethan setting for a dark comedy that, for me, was too dark and not comedic enough, involving undead, fae, dragons, and sentient police birds.

The author has chosen to just use modern speech rather than attempt anything remotely Elizabethan for the dialog, and I think that's a good call; 99.9% of authors (probably more) aren't capable of doing Elizabethan dialog that's remotely authentic, and those who are capable still shouldn't, for the sake of the readers who are not familiar with the literature of the period. (The 99.9% who can't do a good job with it also shouldn't, for the sake of the readers who are familiar with the literature of the period, but this doesn't always stop them trying, sadly.)

The author has also chosen not to attempt to avoid anachronism, or else has done a poor job of avoiding it, probably the first one; it's amazing just how many everyday things have been invented or discovered since the reign of Elizabeth I. Business cards, for example. The fact that fish contains fatty protein and that might be good for a hangover. Boiling your water before using it to wash wounds, I would imagine. Off ramps, definitely. Passports as something every traveller needs and has. Hypnotism. Dating. Shopping bags? Not sure. Coffee, it turns out, was known in Britain by the late 16th century, though it would still have been a rare curiosity.

Even though I think the choice to use modern speech is right (both because I doubt the author could have pulled off accurate Elizabethan speech, and because even if she had, it would have made the book harder to read), I do think she could have avoided the worst anachronisms if she'd wanted to, and that the book would have been stronger for it. The anachronisms turn the Elizabethan era into scenery flats rather than a realized setting. The greatest drama of that day was fully capable of anachronism in the service of the art, and is none the worse for it, but really, the Elizabethan setting here goes to waste for lack of effort. Take out a couple of historical characters that everyone's heard of (Kit Marlowe and Shakespeare), who have minimal impact on the plot, and a brief cameo from Elizabeth herself at the end, and there's not much Elizabethan left. Honestly, very little would have changed if it had been set in almost any other era up to the early 20th century.

Speaking of the plot, I saw the resolution coming a very long way off and wasn't even mildly surprised when it arrived, with minimal assistance from the supposed protagonists, who had just been shown to be largely ineffectual puppets throughout the whole book.

Mechanically (bearing in mind that there may well be another round of edits to come after the pre-release version I read via Netgalley; I hope there is), there are some issues too. The book as a whole needs more hyphens, a few more apostrophes, and not quite so many commas (and some of them in different places, like before a term of address). A number of the excess commas are not unequivocally wrong; they're at places that are, at least, grammatical boundaries, but ones that normally wouldn't be marked with a comma. Some are, of course, between adjectives that are not coordinate, because just about everyone gets those wrong at least some of the time.

There are point of view shifts within a chapter, generally considered poor craft if you are writing in third-person limited, which the author seems to be doing.

I requested this book from Netgalley because I remembered enjoying another book by the author ( Glass Coffin ), though I think had it confused with another book by a different author, and I'd forgotten that I'd also read another book ( Wish You Weren't Here ) from this author that I didn't much enjoy because it was too dark. This one was also darker than I prefer, with an extended torture scene that I skimmed, and not as funny as I would have liked, and between that and the anachronisms and the shonky mechanics, I didn't love it. But I didn't completely hate it, and I enjoyed the hard-working, world-weary police swan Dame Isobel Honkensby (reminiscent of early Sam Vimes, though without as much personality), and a few other incidental moments along the way, so it just squeaks in for three stars.

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Review: The Complete Convergence Trilogy

The Complete Convergence Trilogy by Melissa McShane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are a lot of things I like about Melissa McShane's books (most of them; I'm not a fan of every series).

Firstly, they're well edited. This one has a few typos and other minor glitches, but I spotted a total of a dozen across all three books, and most books I read have twice that number in a single book, or more.

Secondly, the main characters are likeable, committed to doing the right thing, capable, intelligent, and have some depth to them; if they have tragic backstories, they don't whine about them or use them as an excuse for bad behaviour, and if they make bad decisions, they figure that out and do their best to recover and not do so again.

Thirdly, unlike a lot of prolific authors, McShane manages to introduce some depth to the fiction, provide insight into human nature and explore themes, and does that without bogging down the plot in a lot of navel-gazing or repeating herself unnecessarily.

Fourth, her settings and worldbuilding are original and feel solid and lived-in. No painted scenery flats or overworn cliché elements here. In this book, for example, we have two worlds, originally one, separated by magic that went wrong and now, centuries later, coming back together; each has its own part of the original magic system, and a significant thread throughout is figuring out how they relate to each other and whether they can be re-integrated.

If that was the whole thing, it wouldn't be exciting, but we also have romance, politics, war (between and among the people of the two formerly separated worlds), self-discovery, and a strong theme about leadership.

There are good leaders and bad leaders in this book, but not all the bad leaders are bad for the same reason. The main antagonist is a bad leader because she's both psychotic (not always in touch with consensus reality) and psychopathic (treats people as things), but she's the empress of an empire that treats its rulers as avatars of the divine, so... that's a problem. But there are also leaders who are capable administrators but lack a broad perspective because of personal ambition or bigotry, and petty leaders who put their own advancement and glory ahead of the actual aim they're supposed to be working towards, and a leader who isn't very bright and whose decisions are largely driven by cowardice, and leaders who, while both capable and willing to join in the effort for the greater good, are utter weasels. On the flip side, during the course of the story the protagonist gradually comes into her own leadership abilities, which she at first doubts; she's a good leader in part because she's humble. And she observes the leadership style of her love interest, and comments on it throughout; he learns some things about leadership too.

The story is told through her diary entries, which isn't going to be to everyone's taste; I know some readers don't like the epistolary style, though personally I enjoy it. The entries are written after the events, of course, so there's a lot of foreshadowing, and sometimes she has to stop and start again and tell things in the right order, all of which underlines the diary conceit and makes it more believable (though, again, there will be readers who find it annoying).

There's plenty of tension; multiple well-handled, intersecting emotional, character, and plot arcs; and just so much sound craft on display that I can't give it less than five stars. Highly recommended.

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Review: The Golden Triangle

The Golden Triangle by Maurice Leblanc
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Every Lupin book is a little different, but this is one of a group of at least three, written around the same time, that have some strong similarities. We get a long period of setup during which Lupin isn't even mentioned, then someone calls him in as a consulting problem-solver. By this time, we've had drama amounting to melodrama, intense love (often involving someone married to someone else), intense hatred (generally involving the someone else), tragedy, treachery, and patriotism; it couldn't be more French if you fried it in butter and stuck a tricolour flag in it.

In this one, you have sinister Levantines, hidden gold, two people who discover that a mysterious benefactor has been working for years to bring them together, murder, the backdrop of the Great War, a courageous but headstrong protagonist, and, of course, the extreme cleverness and Peter-Pan-like crowing of Lupin as he solves the mystery. It's all thrilling and sensational, if sometimes a bit too much so.

Unfortunately, we also have a black colonial soldier who is literally treated like a dog (he's largely unable to talk because of a war wound, so the protagonist pretends to have discussions with him when thinking aloud, as you would with a pet); he's several times called something that is deeply offensive these days, and (view spoiler)[ends up dying in the service of his "master" (hide spoiler)]. That does introduce a flaw into what is otherwise a rip-roaring novel of action, mystery and suspense.

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Review: Legends & Lattes

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'd been going back and forth about whether I wanted to read this, having read mixed reviews, but two members of my writing critique group recommended it, so I gave it a go.

I'm glad I did. Unlike the earlier, in some ways similar, novella Coffee, Milk & Spider Silk , it makes full use of its sword-and-sorcery setting, mashing it up with modern coffeehouse culture but at least changing the names of things in a way that made sense for the fantasy world. The fact that Viv is an orc and used to be an adventurer matters, in a way that the MC in the other book's identity as a drider and a former cop absolutely did not.

I should disclose that I dislike coffee, as Tolkien said of Dune, "with some intensity," and don't frequent coffee shops, but I still enjoyed this cosy fantasy about the first coffee shop in a fantasy city. When I say "cosy" fantasy, that's partly about tone (I wrote about this in a blog post a couple of years ago, entitled, tongue in cheek, A Cozy Manifesto); but it's also about the stakes being relatively local and personal, rather than global or cosmic or even national, and this book certainly matches that part of the definition. Still, an important element of the book is that not only Viv, but a number of other people, come to care about the success, and indeed the existence, of her coffee shop; the stakes are interpersonal as well.

And this isn't just a slice of life, in which Viv and co. putter along putting new things on the menu from time to time, though it's that too. There's a plot, with challenges to overcome, and part of the importance of it is that Viv doesn't deal with it the way she once would have when she was an adventurer (of, if I had to guess, the Barbarian class), by taking her greatsword off the wall and going about beheading people; she forms alliances instead.

If I have a quibble, it's that the challenges are overcome quite easily, though that's not unexpected in a cosy, after all. People (mostly) act sensibly and with goodwill; the one character who would belong in a grimdark fantasy stands out in stark contrast. This warm tone is the essence of cosy.

In terms of editing, apart from a few too many commas between adjectives that don't require them (a mistake practically everyone makes these days), and a dangling modifier or two, it's very clean. In an interview that's included in the back, the author quotes (unfortunately without attribution) an excellent piece of writing advice that he follows, and that I wish more authors would follow: "Write using words you know, in your own voice."

The result is an enjoyable, well-executed piece which makes me want to read more from this author.

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Review: Eluthienn: A Tale Of The Fromryr

Eluthienn: A Tale Of The Fromryr by Sam Middleton
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

Sadly, it appears to be an unwritten law that you can have airships in your book, or you can use vocabulary correctly, but it's either one or the other. This book conforms to that law, and is also frequently missing the past perfect tense; in fact, it has a fairly complete collection of common issues, including dangling modifiers, sentences that change grammatical direction partway through, and commas before the main verb. I'll note, as always, that I read a pre-release version via Netgalley and the published version may have fixed some of the issues, though there are enough of them that I'm confident a lot will remain. Some of the vocabulary errors were very basic, too, like taught/taut or even it's/its; another demonstration that having an English degree does not mean you've learned good mechanics.

The story was better than the execution, but more tragic and serious than I personally prefer; there's an occasional bit of humour, but it's usually coarse jokes by secondary characters. It wasn't so good that I was willing to keep slogging through the ropy mechanics to see how it ended, though. I did my usual test, when I'm finding a book heavy going, of going off and reading something else to see if I cared enough about the characters to come back to it, and discovered I didn't.

At the point I gave up on it, about halfway through, the two storylines and their two protagonists had not yet intersected. Other reviews indicate that once they do, things get more exciting, though the action scenes weren't really what I had a problem with. There was the occasional scene where the description of every step the character took through the (admittedly somewhat interesting) setting became a bit much, and I wanted more summary of things that didn't matter so we could get to the things that did; the author, I think, is proud of the setting, having done a lot of work on it, and wants to show it off, but overdoes it now and again.

I had some trouble believing in the idea of a vast underground realm where flying ships nearly 1km long and 400m wide (assuming a "league" has its usual meaning of three miles) have plenty of room to maneuver, and things being hexagonal or octagonal apparently because it was cool rather than for any practical reason didn't help, but at least it was fresh and original.

I'm following my usual practice of not giving a star rating on Goodreads to a book I haven't finished, but Netgalley will make me give a rating; it will be three stars, because honestly most authors have bad mechanics these days (though these are worse than average), and the story wasn't awful, just not much to my taste. Lots of people will enjoy this more than me.

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