The Savior by J.R. Ward: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Savior by J.R. Ward

The Savior is the seventeenth book in J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood urban fantasy series, and a solid addition. What makes her books great is how she returns to old characters and continues their stories, in good and bad. This time it was John Matthew’s turn, and his arc was the best in the book, emotional and heart-breaking, as he ponders his likely death and his life. The conclusion of that story-line was especially satisfying.

The love story was between Murhder, a disgraced member of the brotherhood, and Sarah, a human scientist. It wasn’t the main focus of the book though, and they didn’t even meet until later in the story. They both had personal issues to deal with—him with his madness, her with the death of her fiancé and the revelations that brought—and those carried the book nicely. The love story was more of an insta-love type and not terribly interesting, but nice. A great addition to their story was Nate, a young vampire who has been used as a Guinea pig in human experiments, that the two of them rescue.

As is usual, there was also an ongoing story that focuses on the bad guy; this time about Throe who wants to usurp the crown. Luckily it didn’t dominate the book, as he’s not a very interesting foe. The climax of his story seems to tie with Ward’s other series about fallen angels, if I read it correctly, so there’s that to look forward to.

Unlike usually, there wasn’t a new character introduced that will become the focus of the subsequent books. I hope that doesn’t mean the series is coming to its end. There’s still Lassiter, who got his great moment in this book, and who could use his own book. I hope we’ll get that one eventually too, especially if the characters from the parallel series will show up in this one.

All in all, this was a good solid book that I gobbled down in two marathon reading sessions that lasted till small hours of the night. It wasn’t the best book in the series by any definition, but it was better than the two previous books, and it got me to take out the tissues, so I’m happy with it.

***

The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal

I’ve read a couple of other books too that I’ve neglected to write a review of. First one is The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal, the follow up to her great The Calculating Stars novel, an alternative history where the humankind is racing to Mars to escape the dying earth. In this book, Elma is on a three year mission to Mars in the early 1960s, with a cast of characters familiar from the first book.

This was in many ways a better book than the first. The story was more interesting, Elma wasn’t an onlooker in her own life, and the plot was more compact. But Elma was still a bit of a scapegoat to everything that is wrong in her society, which was annoying, and the story’s focus was more on those larger issues than the mission itself. And again, the most interesting story arch was given to Stetson Parker who really grew in this book and turned out to be a great character. He reads like an enemy-turned-love-interest, and he probably would’ve been that if Kowal hadn’t fixed Elma’s marriage with the novella that started the series, where Elma and her husband are old people in Mars. A wasted opportunity there, in my opinion. But despite the flaws, the book stayed with me for a long time, so much so that I had trouble finding anything interesting to read that would match it.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

This was partially remedied by Binti, a novella by Nnedi Okorafor. It’s a sci-fi story of an African girl, Binti, who is accepted to a prestigious university on a different planet. She’s the first in her family to leave earth—or her home village even—and she does it in secret, fearing her family’s reaction. On her way there, the ship is attacked by a tentacled alien race and she’s the only survivor, thanks to a device that allows her to understand them. It’s a story of prejudice, hate and acceptance, with a highly imaginative world and an interesting main character. The ending is a bit long, but it brings the story to a satisfying conclusion. I’ll likely read the follow-up stories too.