Hell for Hire by Rachel Aaron: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Hell for Hire by Rachel Aaron

Hell for Hire starts a new Tear Down Heaven UF series. It’s set in a modern-day Seattle and a world where humans are ignorant about the supernatural around them. It’s not a fun or good world for non-humans. 5000 years ago, Gilgamesh conquered the Paradise that held both heaven and hell, killed its rulers and enslaved all demons. Magic is strictly regulated for warlocks and sorcerers. Only Blackwood witches hiding inside magical forests are allowed to do free magic. And they’re all women.

Adrian Blackwood has been given to warlocks as a child to train with them, a concession Blackwood witches do to keep their freedom. But he escaped and trained as a witch, and the warlocks have hunted him ever since. He’s come to the other side of the States to Seattle to grow his own Blackwood forest, to lure the warlocks there and fight them once and for all.

He hires security that turns out to be four free demons who really shouldn’t exist, as all are enslaved by warlocks. Their leader, Bex, turns out to be more than meets the eye, and she draws the ire of the heavens on them too in addition to the warlocks. Fighting Gilgamesh is something she’s been doing for a long time, but for the first time, she has magical help.

This was a good start to a series. The world is interesting and based on a fresh mythology, and Adrian’s magic is fascinating. Adrian and Bex are great characters with backstories that were only brushed here. A romance may be building between them, but it’s only hinted at here. Side characters, Bex’s demon team and Adrian’s familiar Boston, remained a bit one-dimensional, but perhaps we get to know them better in following books.

Nevertheless, this didn’t hit me quite as hard as Aaron’s previous UF series set in post-apocalyptic Detroit. The pace was slow, the third person point of view was distancing, and there was no proper plot that the characters would be driving, just events. This is sort of a two-act book, where there is preparation for an event that is known from the start, and then the event, the final battle. No highs, lows, or turning points in between. It feels short an act and low on emotions.  The ending is good though, and sets the war to come. It’ll be interesting to see how the odd group pulls that off.

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

Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis

Dreadful is a delightful debut novel by Caitlin Rozakis. It’s set in a rather embarrassing castle of Dread Lord Gavrax, an evil wizard who has lost his memory. He has no recollection of his past, let alone that morning, which turns out to be very problematic. Because his past self has made some plans.

Gav, as he decides to call himself, is middle-aged and not very successful dark wizard or respected among his peers, as he soon discovers. But he’s feared by his goblin staff, which embarrasses him greatly. He’s also embarrassed by his choice in décor and clothing. But he soon finds out Dread Lord is only as dreaded as he appears.

He seems to have some anger management issues he doesn’t know the roots of, but which make him want to burn people around him to death, something he struggles to overcome. He also has a village to manage that is very poor thanks to his past self’s lousy decisions, which he decides to rectify. And worst of all, he has a princess in his dungeon.

His past self has teamed with other dark wizards for something nefarious he doesn’t remember. It involves the princess that his current self has come to like and respect quite a lot. So, it’s up to him to rescue her or failing that, she’ll have to rescue herself. Easier said than done when heroes from all over the kingdom are rushing to her rescue by trying to kill him, and dark wizards more powerful than him are determined to stop him.

This was a fun story with all sorts of shenanigans that kept me guessing to the end. Gav stumbles in and out of problems that are mostly his past self’s making, with rather surprising results. Along the way, he comes to learn a lot about his goblin staff and women, whom he suspects his old self had no respect for. He’s earnest about his desire to change for the better, but it’s not easy. And all the while he fears that if he gets his memories back, he’ll revert to his old evil self.

Gav is rather endearing in his quest for redemption. It isn’t easy and involves a lot of soul searching and some hard conversations with the princess who holds him accountable for his past self. His constant commentary about women’s looks and bodies became a bit off-putting at some point though, as if they only exist to be looked at despite his attempts to see them as people with agency. His friendship with the princess is fairly one-sided, it seemed, and she never quite becomes what she could be. The goblin staff, on the other hand, is delightful in their earnest willingness to help him change.

The ending is good and, since this appears to be a stand-alone, conclusive. Gav rises to the occasion in a manner I didn’t see happening at the beginning of the book, and the story leaves everyone in a better place. All in all, a good story of friendship and redemption that will delight me for a long time.

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

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler

I’ve been waiting for a good western take on Asian isekai genre for so long that I eventually had to write one myself. It’s such a popular genre in Asia that it’s surprising it hasn’t taken in the west. The few western versions that I’ve read have tried to imitate the originals, but they lack the charm and whimsy. But now there’s How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler. It takes the idea of isekai and makes it thoroughly its own.

For those not familiar with the term, in isekai light novels and mangas a person from the modern world is transported to a secondary world, a book, game or fantasy world, either bodily or as a character there, and has to adapt to a new reality. Sometimes there’s a time loop element where the character starts over every time they die. Sometimes their life is improved by the change, sometimes they set out to make the changes themself with the knowledge they have.

Davi is from the modern-day US, she thinks. She doesn’t quite remember anymore, because she’s been in a fantasy world for a better part of a millennium. She was brought there by a wizard as the saviour of the humans from the Dark Lord, and has died hundreds of times in the service of the Kingdom, only to return to the moment she arrived to this word to start again.

Now she’s had enough. Clearly, she isn’t the saviour, because she hasn’t managed to save the Kingdom in all this time. It’s time to switch teams to the winning side. She’ll become the Dark Lord. Easier said than done, because Dark Lords aren’t human. They’re wilder: orcs, werewolves, snake people and other humanoid beasts that don’t look at all like human. But she has an ace in her sleeve. She can pass as a wilder the way humans can’t.

It takes several efforts—and deaths—to get the ball rolling. She recruits a small band of orcs and sets out to build herself a horde to attend a convocation where they choose the next Dark Lord. The way is difficult, geographically and politically, but she prevails, liberating the oppressed and growing her army as she goes—mostly accidentally. And the farther she advances, the more important it becomes that she doesn’t die. Because then everything will reset and she’ll have to start again, and the events have been so fantastical that she couldn’t possibly recreate them again.

But the possibility of starting over is there. Until it isn’t.

This was a great start to a series. Davi is a fairly typical sarcastic UF heroine who runs a constant commentary (in footnotes, which was a tad difficult in an ebook) and references pop culture she really shouldn’t remember, as she doesn’t even remember where she’s from. She’s probably not entirely sane, but who would be after being tortured to death several hundred times, but she’s clever and tenacious. However, part of her grit comes from the knowledge that she can just give up and start again. Until she can’t. The paradigm change is hard on her, but she’s not alone to handle it.

In her quest to become the Dark Lord, Davi accidentally builds herself a family. They’re supposed to be minions, but they’re friends and lovers (she’s permanently horny). The side-characters remain a little distant, as Davi is very self-absorbed in her narrative, but they’re nice and more humane than the humans she’s tried to save all these centuries.

The book is a bit too long though. It’s heavy reading with all the gore and commentary, and the plot advances slowly. Part of the charm of light novels is their shorter length and longer series that don’t really mind pesky things like story arcs. It might’ve worked here too, if it hadn’t been necessary to bring the first book to a turning point to suit western traditions. Now it took me surprisingly long to wade it through to the end.

Ending isn’t a cliffhanger, but it puts Davi on crossroads in her quest. It’ll be interesting to see how she’ll handle the turn her life has taken.

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

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo

The Brides of High Hill is book five of The Singing Hills Cycle of stand-alone fantasy novellas set in an empire that resembles ancient China. I haven’t read the earlier stories, but that wasn’t necessary, although I might have appreciated some elements more if I’d read them.

Cleric Chih finds themself travelling with a family who is escorting their daughter, Pham Nhung, to be married to a wealthy man. The daughter has insisted they accompany her, and they have agreed. Their job is to collect stories, and this is a good opportunity, even though their neixing, a memory spirit that looks like a bird, isn’t with them on this journey to record the stories. The reader is given a notion her absence is meaningful, but nothing more is said about it, other than that Chih misses her.

The bride-to-be is in high spirits, both eager to be married and frightened of the prospect. Chih does their best to support her. But the moment they enter the estate of the groom who is several decades older than Nhung, Chih gets a notion things aren’t as they ought to be. Reader soon suspects this is a retelling of Bluebeard, with scores of missing wives. But when the monsters appear, rather abruptly, they come from a different direction entirely.

This was a delightful, slightly spooky novella, easily read in one sitting. Chih was an interesting character, even though we don’t learn much about them. They are a recurring character though, so earlier books might have more. Their struggle to get out of the web they don’t even know they’re in is fairly abrupt, and the reader is taken slightly by a surprise, but it worked for a story this length. The atmosphere could’ve been spookier though, as the novella is advertised as a gothic mystery. Now it was a fairly pleasant read with a gory end. But I’m intrigued enough to check out the earlier stories in the series.

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