Entwined by H.M. Long: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Entwined by H. M. Long

Entwined is set in a secondary world that resembles the early 20th century with its technology, with two kinds of people: humans and Entwined, people genetically capable of magic who aren’t considered human. The Entwined used to rule Harrow where the events take place, but after a revolution of sorts, humans are now in charge and it means trouble for the Entwined that humans hate. Only the Entwined bound to the Guild can operate freely. But the Guild is a gilded cage that’s not for everyone.

Ottilie is an Entwined who has escaped the Guild. The Guild forces marriages between the Entwined in order to produce offspring capable of magic, and she and her pretend fiancé, Lewis, have fled to avoid it. She’s hiding under a false name from both the Guild and humans in Harrow. She works as a secretary to a private investigator, saving money to flee the country to where Lewis is waiting. He’s a goal to work towards, and maybe a crush she doesn’t want to admit.

Ottilie’s boss has unearthed an artefact a client wants, which should bring in so much money that Ottilie can finally leave. But before the transaction is complete, both the artefact and her boss disappear. The client wants the artefact back and since Ottilie is the only one left, she’s forced to find it. She has a good notion who took it: her sister Pretoria, who has also left the Guild, and become a thief.

The artefact isn’t the only thing bringing Ottilie trouble. Humans are turning against the Entwined and it’s getting more difficult to hide what she is. Human zealots and Entwined terrorists are clashing and creating political upheaval, it could be that the artefact she has to find is a key to destroying the Entwined for good, and man she’s interested in might be a terrorist. On top of this, her other sister shows up too, and she wants to take Ottilie back to the Guild. Things soon get out of hands and Ottilie finds herself in the middle of events she has no way out of.

This was an interesting first book in a duology. The magic powered by different lights (sun, moon, twilight etc.) was unique, and the political situation was complex. It was a bit too complex, to be honest, and I found it confusing a lot of time. The narrative was rich and pulled the reader into the world and the magic effortlessly. The story was a bit slow though, and not as engaging as the events would merit.

The narrative is from Ottilie’s POV. She’s a good character with a lot of baggage, but not as compelling as, for example, Hessa with her rage in Long’s Four Pillars series. I couldn’t quite fathom why she’d come to Harrow where she knew she’d be trapped and why she hadn’t left sooner, as she had the money for it. Many of the events just happened to her and she accepted everything. Her waffling between suitors was very characteristic. It wasn’t until the end that she took a stance and even then, others made the decisions. The side characters, especially the sisters, had good backstories too, but the reader didn’t have similar insight into them as Ottilie, though the epilogue gave a good glimpse.

The book ends at a natural turning point, setting the stage for the second book. Good though this was, the storyline I was most interested in concluded here and nothing particularly compels me to read more. I’m not sure I’ll read the conclusion.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

How (Not) to Conjure a Boyfriend by Jordon Greene: review

3/5 stars on Goodreads

How (Not) to Conjure a Boyfriend by Jordon Greene

This is a queer YA retelling of Sandra Bullock-Bill Pullman movie While You Were Sleeping from 1995, which I loved back in the day, but which probably isn’t well known among the YA target (unless they’re middle-aged women like me.) Knowing the plot, I read this mostly to find out how or if the story would differ from the original. There weren’t any surprises, but the story worked well.

Mackenzie is 17, nonbinary semi-orphan with a chronically depressed mother and a one-sided crush on Hayden, 18, a client at the café Kenzie works at. One night, Hayden slips, hits his head, and falls into coma. To get to see him in the hospital, Kenzie lies that they’re his enbyfirend, which the nurse tells to Hayden’s family. To Kenzie’s surprise, everyone is so delighted that Kenzie doesn’t want to reveal the truth. Especially when they’re invited into the kind of loving, warm family they don’t have at home.

The only person who doesn’t believe Kenzie is Zach, 17, Hayden’s equally gorgeous brother. He and Kenzie end up spending time together, and to their horror, Kenzie realises they’re falling for Zach. But instead of coming clean, they double down on the lie. All sorts of misunderstandings and missed opportunities to tell the truth take place, until Hayden wakes up, bringing an end to the lie.

This was a cute, feelgood queer romance, but it never rose to the level of the themes it introduced: gender identity, queerness, or mental health. All characters were understanding and sympathetic, no one was judgemental some misgendering notwithstanding, and no bad things happened. Kenzie’s mother roused from her depression to show some warmth, and even clearing up the lie went without complications. The ending was a bit abrupt, but conclusive and good.

Kenzie was a good character, with a lot going on in their life. I don’t know how well they represented an NB person, and they never reflect on their gender identity. We get more about them being a witch. Mostly they came across as a very typical YA heroine with their inner monologue—all their behaviour or self-expression was fairly feminine—or a Twinkie gay man. The narrative was from Kenzie’s POV, so side characters, Zach included, weren’t terribly well fleshed out. The bestie existed to show sympathy and support. Zach and Hayden’s parents were inspired by Bullock and Pullman. The witchy stuff was also inspired by Bullock’s Practical Magic (1998).

The plot followed the beats of the original. There was no conflict beyond the lie, so the mid-part of the book felt a bit long with filler events where Kenzie and Zach got to know each other. For a YA novel, school didn’t feature except for a couple of mentions, which was both refreshing and odd. All in all, this was an easy read that paid nice homage to the original without rising above it or introducing anything new.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett

I really liked Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series, so I was eager to read Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter. It’s set in 1920s Montreal, a location that isn’t exactly overused in fantasy, in a world where a handful of people have ability for magic. Magicians aren’t outlawed, but they’re not entirely tolerated, because they’re careless with their magic, hurting people for fun. And none are more reviled than Havelock Renard, the Witch King, who has almost ended the world with his spell three years earlier.

Agnes Aubert is in her mid-thirties, a widow and an owner of a cat shelter in a town where people don’t really understand the need to shelter cats. A random magic battle on the street outside her shop has left it inhabitable, and she’s searching for a new place before winter comes. Unfortunately, the potential landlords all balk when they hear about the cats.

Out of options, she rents a shop everyone tells her she should stay away from. Even she knows it, sensing something odd about the place, but she’s been inexplicably drawn to it. Everything goes well at first, even if odd people she knows are magicians show up regularly and disappear into the back room where she’s been instructed not to explore.

But then she’s attacked in her shop by a magician who demands an artefact she has no idea about—and a man emerges to defend her. He turns out to be no other than Havelock Renard himself, who is keeping a secret magic artefact shop in her cellar. The magician attacking them is his sister, Valérie.

Havelock is sure he doesn’t have the artefact, but Agnes has a different notion. She has her cats to protect, so she starts unearthing the item from Havelock’s collections. But Valérie isn’t the only person causing the shop trouble. The police are after Havelock too. And to her surprise, Agnes finds she’s not willing to hand him over.

This was a delightful cozy fantasy. In its centre are two sets of siblings with very different dynamics. Agnes has a loving, supporting sister Élise, who goes to battles with her on all fronts. Havelock has a more complicated relationship with his sister who has turned maniac with power. He knows he needs to defeat her, but all he sees is the person who used to take care of him. Magical system is interesting and I’d love to explore the origin world more. And always, everywhere, there are cats getting into places they shouldn’t be, with proper roles and characters.

There’s also a romance of sorts. Agnes is still healing from losing her husband, though it’s been long enough that’s she’s willing to consider a new love. Havelock isn’t really a people person—or not entirely a person anymore, as magic eats away people—so romance is a mystery to him. In the end, it really doesn’t go anywhere, so I hope there’s a follow-up book. The ending is open enough on that front.

However, the book is a bit small in scope, as befits a cozy fantasy. Montreal barely features except in street names that are in French (though I don’t know if they’re real streets) and the fact that people speak French and occasionally English both. The historical setting doesn’t entirely come alive, as everything basically takes place in one location. Side characters seldom have direct dialogue, so they seem like props. A lot seems to be happening on the background that affects the plot—Élise’s husband is a politician fighting for re-election; mages are causing havoc; the police are hunting magicians—but they solve themselves rather easily. Agnes is more concerned about her cats, which stalls the plot in the middle.

But in the end, it’s human ingenuity that wins the day, the ending is conclusive and good, and though the romance didn’t really happen, it leaves Agnes and Havelock in a good place. All cats found homes. I’d read more.

Jitterbug by Gareth L. Powell: review

3/5 stars on Goodreads

Jitterbug by Gareth L. Powell

Jitterbug is set in near future of our solar system that’s been drastically altered. All the outer planets have vanished one by one by invisible forces, with Mars being currently devoured. It’s only a matter of time before the Earth is gone. In their place has appeared a ring of artificial planetoids shaped like wedges of orange that curve towards the sun with nothing on the backside towards the outer space. The humanity has inhabited the insides of these planetoids.

Criminals, too, like to hide in the vastness of these new habitats, and to capture them, a system of bounty hunters has emerged. Copernicus Brown and his three-person crew (two women and a man) are bounty hunters on Jitterbug, a former freight ship he has inherited from his father. A distress call brings them to a scene of a pirate attack, from which they save a woman, Amber Roth. Things go sideways from there.

Roth is carrying a message that people are willing to kill for. It brings the crew to the attention of a leading politician, and together, they go to the outside of the spheres to find the origin of the message—only to learn that the humanity is about to come under attack by alien forces. Are they the same who created the sphere in the first place or is something else going on? Whatever it is, Jitterbug and her crew has to deal with it and fast.

This was a competent sci-fi adventure, a small-scale space opera. Told by four first-person point of view characters, one of which is Jitterbug herself, it brings the humanity to the brink of extinction and offers an out of space and time solution to it. It wasn’t entirely engaging though. It was mostly narrated to the reader, and apart from the first chapters, the first-person narrators didn’t manage to bring the reader in the story with them. The intimacy of first-person wasn’t there, and the reader didn’t learn anything about the characters except what was necessary for the scene. The inevitable romance especially suffered from this, when neither narrator even hinted at romantic feelings before it was already a reality.

The ending twisted this readers brain, but I’m not going to question the time-bending solution. It brings the story to a full circle, the prologue finally getting an explanation in the epilogue. It’s a satisfying ending for this standalone story. No need for more.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Library of Amorlin by Kalyn Josephson: review

3/5 stars on Goodreads

The Library of Amorlin by Kalyn Josephson

The Library of Amorlin starts The Age of Beasts fantasy, and it was one of my anticipated reads for the start of the year. The beginning was promising, but unfortunately, the book didn’t deliver.

The setting is interesting. A world of several kingdoms around a neutral zone of a magical library that bends time and space within its limits. The library is in charge of protecting magical beasts and mediating between kingdoms. Unfortunately, Kalthos, one of the kingdoms, is ruled by a religion that sees the beasts as embodiments of sins, and systematically destroys them. As beasts die, magic becomes more unpredictable and the natural order of things begin to unravel. So, Kalthos and the library are at direct odds.

The premise is good too. Kasira, in her late twenties, is a con-artist who grew up on the streets of Kalthos until she was captured. She was held imprisoned in inhuman conditions for four years, after which the sentence was commuted to hunting and killing beasts as part of elite killing units, which she’s been doing for the past three years. And then she’s offered a chance for freedom by Vera, the Kalthos ambassador to Amorlin: con her way into the library and bring it under Kalthos’s rule. She has three months. Fail and it’s back to prison.

Kasira sets out to convince the librarian, Allaster, that she’s not a Kalthos spy. He doesn’t believe her. He’s right. She pulls off a couple of cons and manages to change his mind. And then a twist happens, which changes things for Kasira, sort of but not. And then another twist, upping the stakes but not. And then the final con that brings the book to a satisfying conclusion with no cliffhanger ending.

Technically, this all should’ve made for an interesting book. Problem is, there’s no plot. There are events that spring out of nowhere and end as fast, with no aftermath or consequences. The events include cons that Kasira pulls, but how she does them isn’t shown on the page. What readers see is her reading books, tending to beasts, and training with Allaster. The plot that affects them both happens elsewhere. There is a war brewing and a possible coup taking place in Kalthos, on top of the battle for the library, and on the background, Vera is pulling strings.

The final continues the same. The reader is shown one thing, only to learn that Kasira has pulled something on the background. On the surface, it’s interesting, but not as interesting as following her along it would’ve been. The end result is satisfying and clever, but it leaves the reader cold.

From the reader’s point of view, Kasira has no agency in her own story. There are the cons, but the reader isn’t shown them, and the small wins she creates are made void by an outside influence that always trumps her efforts, forcing her to react instead of being in charge. We’re only seemingly following Kasira’s story, but what we get is Vera’s efforts on the background.

When the protagonist is a con-artist, I expect to be shown how they plan the cons, and whether they can pull them off, especially since some here seemed a bit impossible. I don’t want a smug admission after the fact that “I made this happen,” without being shown—or even told—how. The surprise factor isn’t interesting. Kasira comes off as useless, boring and smug on the page. That she makes things work in the end is fine, but doesn’t feel like a win when we’ve not seen her do it.

Allastair, who also has point of view chapters, isn’t any better. He’s grabbling with a magical condition that already killed his predecessor. He’s 130 years old and he still hasn’t found the solution. All we ever see him doing, when he’s not mistrusting Kasira, is reading. He comes off as waffling and useless. The same goes with the few side characters. They all have issues on the background that affect how they act, with some surprises, but again, it’s not shown on the page.

Without a plot, the author is forced to use the out of the blue twists to make the story more interesting. All it would’ve taken is to give the main characters something proactive to do and show it to the reader. Anything that would take the reader along the ride, anticipate and fear with them. The events of the ending especially suffered from this. Kasira is clever, but we get nothing but the aftermath. There wasn’t even a proper romance yet to make things exciting.

All this is to say that this was a boring book. There’s no reason to read it; just skip to the end. It took me ages to finish, and that’s not including the couple of days after the second twist around 60% mark when I stopped reading completely. I almost didn’t pick it up again, but forced myself to finish. The ending was more conclusive than I expected, and it was good enough to leave the story here.

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.