The Vengeance by Emma Newman: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Vengeance by Emma Newman

The Vengeance starts The Vampires of Dumas series, which I find both an intriguing and a slightly misleading series name. Vampires barely make an appearance, and it isn’t set in Dumas’ own time either. But it is inspired by his novels set centuries before, in the era of musketeers and swashbuckling pirates.

The book starts as a pirate story. Morgaine is a daughter of a female pirate captain sailing in the Caribbean. She’s lived her entire life at sea and loves it, and knows nothing of her mother’s life back in France. But on her deathbed, her mother makes a confession that sends her reeling—and heading across the ocean to France.

Morgaine isn’t her daughter. The real mother has searched for her for twenty years and she needs Morgaine’s help. Fired up by her anger towards the fake mother, but also anger towards the person who ordered her death, she sails to France to rescue her mother and avenge the death of the woman she thought of as her mother.

She is wholly unprepared for the polite society. But so is the society unprepared for her. And she isn’t given a chance to find her land legs. People are after her, trying to kidnap her left and right. One of them succeeds. He claims to be her father, and tells her not to go after her mother. She doesn’t listen.

Joining her on her quest is a young woman, Lisette, whom Morgaine’s father has hired as her (much needed) governess. Together, they go to see and rescue Morgaine’s mother. But things aren’t at all like she had imagined. And it may turn out that the one person she needs revenge on is the one she wanted to connect with.

This was a good, complete story, and clearly a stand-alone. Either there are different characters in the next book, like often in Ms Newman’s series, or Morgaine’s next adventure will be something completely different. It wasn’t a long book though, and the pacing was a bit off. 

Too much time was spent on the voyage to France, even though it didn’t affect the story in any way. And the book was closer to 70% mark before the women headed out to find Morgaine’s mother. That journey was mostly skipped, even though it had a great impact on the endgame. Perhaps the story wasn’t meant to conclude here originally, with maybe the second book about the events with Morgaine’s mother, which would explain the pacing.

Biggest sufferer was the relationship between Morgaine and Lisette, which happened sort of behind the scenes. One minute it didn’t exist and the next it was there. It was lovely that the women found each other, but if you’re reading this for a romance, heightened emotions and angst, that won’t be there.

The supernatural element was sidelined too. If there hadn’t been the series title revealing it, I wouldn’t have expected it when it emerged around 65% mark. It would’ve been an excellent plot twist. Now, I kept expecting it the entire book and was a little disappointed with how long it took. But we got an intriguing glimpse and I hope the follow-ups will dwell in the supernatural world more.

The ending was a bit hasty, and the reader is left with many questions about the other players who wanted to kidnap Morgaine, and what their agenda was. It was slightly too convenient as well, but it was done on Morgaine’s terms, and it was good. The writing was great and kept me engaged. I’d read more of this series, whether it’s about her or other characters.

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

Atlas Alone by Emma Newman: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Atlas Alone by Emma Newman

Atlas Alone is the fourth book in Emma Newman’s brilliant Planetfall sci-fi series. So far, each book has been a stand-alone, set in different places with different protagonists. But Atlas Alone leans heavily on the second book, After Atlas, with its world-building and characters.

After Atlas introduced a near-future earth where democracy doesn’t exist anymore and everything is owned by corporations, land, air, and people included. Some people are indentured to corporations, sold for their skills or to human experiments. Everyone is chipped with a personal AI that is both a blessing and a curse. The book ended with the protagonist, Carlos Moreno, an indentured detective conditioned to never leave a puzzle unsolved, securing a place for him and his friend Dee on Atlas 2, a space-ship leaving the earth to a distant planet introduced in the first book, Planetfall. As they leave, they witness something that has a direct impact to this fourth book.

Planetfall by Emma Newman

In Atlas Alone, the point of view protagonist is Dee. She came across as a sulky teenager in After Atlas, but she turned out to be in her early forties. That doesn’t mean much, as people can genetically modify themselves and live for at least a couple of hundred years. Which is good, considering that the journey Atlas 2 is on will take twenty years. Dee is a data analyst who has spent her adult life as a debt slave conditioned in what is called hot-houses to toe the corporate line of whichever business owns her. Her life hasn’t been easy, and she has serious trust and emotional issues.

The book starts six months after the end of After Atlas. Dee and Carl have trouble adjusting to the life on Atlas 2, mostly because of what they witnessed as they left the earth. A chance job offer allows Dee to begin a serious investigation to what happened, who is in charge of Atlas 2 and what is its mission. This she does by becoming a member of an elite gaming community, with the help of a mysterious benefactor that has the ability to override her AI chip. The games turn out to be oddly personal for Dee, as they all have to do with her past and the tragedies that have shaped her. But she is strong and unemotional, and has had decades of practice in locking her past away. The games don’t change who she is, even when her mysterious benefactor tries to probe into her issues with her past—or especially because of it.

After Atlas by Emma Newman

What Dee learns in the games is that the ship is run by fundamentalist Christians who are prepared to kill millions of people and enslave the rest. She becomes convinced that the only way to bring them to justice is to kill them. First she does this within the immersive games, but somehow the deaths happen in real life too. And then it’s time for her to ditch the games and kill the rest of the bad guys in real life.

Planetfall books are brilliantly composed to look like sci-fi mysteries, but each book is actually a journey to the mind and psychopathology of the protagonist. Each time, it’s done so subtly that the reader is convinced to the end that the story will turn out to be fairly conventional. In Atlas Alone, even as the last chapter began, I thought I knew how everything would turn out. I was wrong.

It’s impossible to talk about the stunt the author pulls at the very end without spoiling everything. It might seem like a wrong way to finish the book, but it actually makes the reader re-evaluate the entire story and realise what it’s been about all along. I found it a perfect and just ending for Dee.

It takes great skill to dupe the reader to such extent and still make them appreciate the ending. Here it’s done brilliantly. Nonetheless, I only gave the book four stars. Some of it is for my disappointment that a book set on a space-ship mostly ignores the ship in favour of immersive games that take Dee back to earth. Also, the gaming sections were slightly boring and even knowing their worth in hindsight didn’t change that. But I don’t think the author is done with the series, and I’m absolutely looking forward to reading anything she sets in her Planetfall world.

Books I hope to read in 2019

It’s been five years since I’ve posted on this blog, and I think it’s time to revive it. I haven’t stopped reading, or reviewing books; I just published the reviews on my other blog, Susanna Writes. I’m not entirely sure writing two blogs is sensible, but I’m about to give it a go—again—anyway. It’s one of those things that make sense at the beginning of a new year. So here goes.

It’s been my habit for the past couple of years to write a list of books that I hope to read at the beginning of the year. There are so many books being published, that it’s hard to keep track of them all. With a list, I’ll at least remember the most interesting ones. So far, I haven’t once read everything on the list, as I keep reading outside it, but it’s worked well otherwise. If you want to know what I read last year, here’s a post I wrote on my other blog (although, in hindsight, I should probably have published it on this one).

This year, I pledged to read sixty books in Goodreads Reading Challenge, meaning that I should read five books a month. For the past two years, I’ve read fifty-five books a year, so I’m not entirely hopeful that I’ll be able to do it, but it won’t be for the lack of reading if I don’t.

The list for 2019 has sixty-nine books. Fifteen are transfers from the previous list, eight of which were already on the list before that one. Only the books that I really think I want to read, even if I didn’t find time for them before, made it to this year’s list too. Thirteen books are published this year, and they mostly belong to ongoing series by my favourite authors. The rest are mostly books that I already own, but haven’t got around reading, or belong to series that I haven’t managed to catch up with yet. I even went through my Kindle to see what gems I had hidden there, and added them on the list.

My list is heavy on urban fantasy and fantasy: thirty UF books and nineteen fantasy books. That pretty much reflects my reading habits in general. Everything else is genre fiction too; it’s seldom that I read literary fiction these days. There are ten sci-fi books that I want to read, but only one contemporary romance, which is odd, considering that I write them myself, but those tend to be the books that I add on my list as I come across them. Here are some of the books that I’m especially eager to read this year, in no particular order.

Summoned to the Thirteenth Grave by Darynda Jones. This is the last book in her Charley Davidson UF series of a grim reaper that I absolutely love, so it’s with part eagerness and part dread that I wait for it to come out. The publication date is January 15, so not long to wait anymore. And then it will be over. Forever.

Vicious and Vengeful by V.E. Schwab. I love everything she writes, and I expect to find these two books exciting too. I got the first as a birthday present last year, but then waited to read it until I had the second book too, which I got for a Christmas present. So those go to the top of my reading pile.

Wolf Rain by Nalini Singh is the latest in her long Psy-Changeling paranormal romance series. There hasn’t been a weak book yet, so when it comes out in June, I’ll be reading it instantly. And she’ll probably publish other books this year too that aren’t on my list, and I’ll be reading all of them too. This one doesn’t have a cover yet.

The Savior by J.R. Ward is another auto-buy. It’s the book seventeen in her Black Dagger Brotherhood UF series of vampire warriors, and each book has been excellent. She’s publishing other books this year too, and all will go on my list. The first of those is Prisoner of Night, which is set in the same BDB world, and is published next week.

The Wicked King by Holly Black is the second book in her Folk of the Air series of fairies and humans living among them, and it’s published January 8. The first book was exciting, and I expect the follow up to live up to its predecessor.

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone is a space opera published in June. I’d hoped there would be a new Craft Sequence book, because the next one can’t come fast enough, but I’m sure this will be great too. Another book by him that I’m waiting for, written with Amal El-Mohtar, is This is How You Lose the Time War that comes out in July. I’m not exactly sure what genre that one belongs to, but it has everything, spies, time-travel, and love.

Brave the Tempest by Karen Chance is the latest in Cassandra Palmer UF series. It’s been too long since the previous book and this one can’t come fast enough. Until then, I can return to her UF world with Siren’s Song, a shorter story, which doesn’t have a publication date yet, but should come out soon.

That’s just a small sample of what’s to come. I also look forward to reading Atlas Alone by Emma Newman, fourth book in her Planetfall series, Exit Strategy and Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, which belong to her Murderbot Diaries series, and Raven Tower, the new Ann Leckie book. And, truly, all books on my list are those that I want to read. It’s just that occasionally I have to prioritise.

The first book of the year has been selected already too. That’s The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman. It’s the fifth book in her Invisible Library series, and so far it’s very good. I’ll write a review once I’m finished. Until then, let me know what you’ll be reading this year.