Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop

Turns of Fate starts the Isle of Wyrd, a new urban fantasy series by Anne Bishop. It’s set in modern US, though the exact time or location aren’t given. It’s a great start, but a tad difficult to review.

A town of Penwych stands by a river, closest to Isle of Wyrd, which is a weird, supernatural place where the arcana—the fae, maybe—live and interact with humans in Destiny Park. During the day, they look like human, but they’re anything but. People visit the Destiny Park to have their future read or to bargain with the arcana to change their fate. You pay the price, which is seldom money, and if you betray them, you’re punished according to your fate.

Sometimes the punishments catch up with them on the human side of the river where they are investigated by the 13th precinct, which consists of people who aren’t afraid to visit the island and its odd and scary occupants. Beth Fahey is the newest detective there, and she’s thrown in the deep end from the start. But to her captain’s surprise, she gets along with the arcana surprisingly well. Suspiciously well. She’s sort of the main character, although she’s mostly on the background, her story unravelling slowly.

This was an episodic novel consisting of several cases that the 13th precinct investigates. There’s a case of a ghost gun, for example; bullying teenagers disappearing in the island, and a woman fleeing an ex. All were about abuse in some way, parental abuse, bullying, spousal abuse etc. It made for a heavy reading at times, even if the details weren’t dwelled on. The cases are told from several points of view, the perpetrators included, and while they conclude in one manner, they affect the other cases too, or are returned to at a later stage when the fate catches up with the perpetrators.

All cases were interesting, even if they weren’t traditional mysteries as such. The arcana emerge more helpful than humans believe them to be, although they are thoroughly alien in their nature, and they never help in a straightforward manner. The bad people are always humans. The atmosphere is similarly dark and mysterious as in Bishop’s The Others series, where humans are a small minority at the mercy of ancient gods. The conflict between humans and the arcana isn’t imminent here, but I’m guessing that’s where the story is headed to.

The episodic narrative worked, but it also meant that the story had several smaller high points without a larger arc, and it ended kind of abruptly, at the conclusion of one of the cases. The main characters were interesting, and the stories never went where I thought they would go. There’s no romance, but maybe a possibility of one. Beth found new things about herself and her past, but her story is only beginning. I’ll definitely continue.

Crowbones by Anne Bishop: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Crowbones by Anne Bishop

It has been a long wait for a new book in The Others series, three years since Wild Country and four since Lake Silence, where the characters of Crowbones were introduced. It’s book eight in the overall series and third book in the World of the Others spin-off.

Only a few months has passed since the events of Lake Silence. Vicki DeVine has her resort, The Jumble, up and running, and humans are vacationing there for the experience of living among the Others. But not even the Crows that Vicki employs are harmless, and the resort is surrounded and protected by much more deadly creatures too. When humans show disrespect and outright break the rules, the Others retaliate swiftly.

Someone is deliberately spreading maliciousness among humans and the Others. But they haven’t gone unnoticed, and they’re being followed by Crowbones, a creature who punishes the misbehaving. When people start dying, the human police, Chief Grimshaw, tries his best to investigate. When it doesn’t happen fast enough, the Others who rule the small town of Sproing, decide to speed things up by blocking all the routes in and out. Nobody is leaving until the guilty are found—and punished.

This was another great addition to the series. The creepy, dark atmosphere is the same, the world of the Others as unique as it has ever been, and the characters more familiar. There are more point of view characters and Vicki isn’t the focus, despite having her chapters in first person narrative while the others are in third. It’s mostly Grimshaw’s book, and he’s emerging to be my favourite. I kept wishing that the romantic pairing would be with him and Vicki, as they have better chemistry, but the author is set on Julian. He’s fine, just not interesting, and since there weren’t any scenes where the two properly interacted, it was difficult to get into the spirit of the slowly building romance.

Because of the several narrators, the suspense wasn’t quite as tense as in the previous book and the personal stakes weren’t as high, but it worked well in the end. But we still didn’t learn anything new about Sproingers, those unique critters that live only in Sproing.

I hope we don’t have to wait for the next book quite as long as this one, because I can’t get enough of this wonderful series. Maybe it’s time for a re-read...

Written in Red by Anne Bishop / Siren’s Song by Karen Chance: reviews

5/5 stars on Goodreads

It’s been a while since a book captured my attention so completely that I just kept reading through the night without the need to check social media or other distractions even once. Written in Red by Anne Bishop managed that rare feat. It’s the first book in The Others series, published in 2013. I’ve long meant to read the series, but I only now had a chance to. All I can say is, I should’ve read it sooner.

Written in Red by Anne Bishop

One of the reasons I’ve postponed reading it is because I believed it to be fantasy, as the other books by Bishop that I’ve read have been. The cover of the book strengthened the notion too. But it’s actually urban fantasy set in modern world with a unique origin story. The world is ruled by the Others, beings who can assume the look of humans, but who are all either apex predators or elementals with huge powers. Humans are meat to them, in minority, and fairly thoroughly subservient to Others. Humans are tolerated because of their innovative nature, but—should the need arise—they are easily disposed of too.

However, the story isn’t really about the conflict between humans and the Others. It’s about a woman who isn’t completely either. Meg is a blood prophet who seeks shelter among the Others and begins to carve a life for herself there. Having grown up in an institution with no outside contacts, both the human world and the world of the Others is alien to her.

The book has a great cast of characters, many of whom get their own point of view chapters. Meg is a bit of a Mary Sue, in a sense that everyone instantly likes her. That is explained with her special nature, but it’s still a bit too convenient how predators who don’t really understand humans at all fall for her kindness so easily. But it’s also amusing and charming to watch those interactions.

The Others are violent and convincingly alien. Unlike in urban fantasy in general, there are no mitigating characteristics that would make them more acceptable to readers. Simon, the leading male character, is a wolf, and although he has to spend a lot of time looking like human and interacting with them, his reaction to most things is that of an animal. There is rapport being built between him and Meg, but to describe it as a romance would be making it too human.

Despite the non-human nature of the Others, they are the good guys of the story. The bad guys are all human. The divide is fairly black and white too, which makes the inevitable conflict fairly straight-forward. Bad people want Meg back, even if they have to risk an attack against the Others. In the end, the conflict isn’t as interesting as everything else that is happening in the book.

Meg’s story continues in subsequent books, so this is only the beginning. And since I’m a latecomer to the series, I don’t have to wait to read them all.

***

Siren's Song by Karen Chance

3/5 stars on Goodreads

Siren’s Song by Karen Chance is an in-between book in her Cassandra Palmer series. It’s a companion book to Dragon’s Claw, an earlier in-between book. Both take place in magical Hong Kong during an attack against it, but in the first the star is Dorina Basarab, and in this one it’s John Pritkin, the war mage. Both books have a couple of scenes where they interact, and it’s fun to witness the characters of different series meeting.

For an additional book—a novella like the cover says—this is a long-one; a hundred thousand words, according to the author, so a full-length book. Half of it would’ve sufficed. The book starts well, but it evolves into an endless, endlessly repetitive battle that is so confusing that it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on. And in the end, it doesn’t even matter. All the fighting has no impact on the outcome of the story.

I like Pritkin. He is by far my favourite character in Cassandra Palmer series, and more of him is always better than less. But despite the length of the book, I felt like I didn’t know him any better in the end than I did before. Instead of the endless mayhem, there should’ve been more internalising, something that would’ve strengthened the character. The author has struggled with this, but has become better in the past couple of books. It’s therefore upsetting that she’s reverted to her earlier bad habits.

There aren’t all that many books left in the series in general. The author has told that her publisher has dropped her, but that she’ll self-publish the rest. If Siren’s Song is an example of how those books will turn out, they might be disappointing.