Battle Bond is the second book in
Buroker’s Death Before Dragons series. It starts almost right after the first
book with references to it and the aftermath still going on. Val is as
sarcastic and kickass as ever, but her sessions with the therapist are starting
to have a hold. She even goes to yoga, although that doesn’t end well. Zav the
dragon is his arrogant self, but he starts to warm up to Val a little. We also
learn that dragons are perfectly capable of relationships in their human form,
which gives hope for a future romance between Zav and Val. There is some build-up
to it in this book, but nothing major yet.
The plot is full action from the start. A new dragon shows
up, killing humans, and both Val’s boss and Zav want him gone. And a group of
shifters is harassing Val’s weapons supplier, so she’s helping her too. Neither
task goes well. Val gets her ass handed
to her many times before everything is solved. Luckily she heals fast. However,
the way she deals with the dragon causes a rift between her and Zav, which
might spell trouble for her in the future. I can’t wait to read what happens
next.
Honor among Thieves by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre
Occasionally Amazon manages to recommend a book that is spot
on. Honor among Thieves grabbed me from the start and took me on a ride
through stars. It’s a YA sci-fi by authors Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre set on
near future earth. The earth has been saved by an alien race of sentient
spaceships, and in return a hundred humans are selected every year on a trip
around space inside them. It’s considered a huge honour to be selected, but
when the protagonist, Zara, is chosen, she has other ideas.
Sentient spaceships that look like huge whales aren’t a new
concept, and calling them Leviathan isn’t exactly innovative either. Giving the
spaceship a personality, whether it’s an AI or other kind, is a well-used idea
too. Still, there is something about Nadim, the ship Zara is assigned to, that makes
him stand out as a person among the other characters.
Zara is a fairly typical YA heroine, ill-treated and angry.
She starts as a thief living on streets, but she begins to heal on board of Nadim and grows to be a hero.
She also turns out to be a veritable technical genius, which I found a bit
far-fetched, considering she hadn’t studied much. But I could move past that.
At the heart of the story is the friendship and bond between
Nadim and Zara. Both have suffered psychological trauma and abuse that gives
them common ground and ability to understand each other even though they come
from such different worlds. Reading the reviews, some found their bond creepy. YA
readers are used to there being a love story at the heart of every book; the
authors tease with this with an early character that turns out to be something
completely different. They view the bond in romantic light and are repulsed by
it. I’m not sure the bond between Zara and Nadim is romantic, although their
connection is often described like two people falling in love, but I could be
wrong.
The story is exciting too. It’s divided into four separate
parts, each with its own arc that leads seamlessly to the next part. Stakes get
gradually higher from one part to the next, until the great revelation at the
end. The main cast of characters is fairly small, which is good, and none of
them is solely black or white, not even the sentient ships. I’m not entirely sure how the title fits, as there are no other thieves than Zara, but the authors made a valiant effort to integrate it to the plot. The story ends at
an exciting place and I definitely want to know what will happen next.
Love Hard by Nalini Singh is the third
book in Hard Play contemporary romance series featuring four rugby playing New
Zealand brothers. Jake is the second youngest, a single dad of a six-year-old
after his teenage sweetheart suddenly died right after giving birth. His counterpart
is Juliet, a wild-hearted best friend of his former love. They didn’t like each
other at school, but years later, they are different people and sparks fly.
I love romance novels with lots of happy tears, and this one
made me cry an ocean. Jake and Juliet were a great, balanced and grownup couple
despite their young age. Both came with package, on top of which they had the
shared past they needed to work through too. All problems got solved fairly
easily, but in a satisfying way. And the entire Bishop-Esera family made me
want to be adopted by them. This was perhaps my favourite in the series so far,
but there’s one more book to come and I have high hopes for it.
4/5 stars on Goodreads
A Lovely Drop by Darynda Jones
A Lovely Drop by Darynda Jones is a novella or a short story
of about eighty pages. Despite the length, the story is fully developed, and I
didn’t feel like anything was missing. The premise is interesting: Andrea has
the ability to ‘drop’ twenty-four hours into past and observe everything that
has happened. She has operated under radar, helping anonymously to solve
difficult crimes. But now she has been caught by the Homeland Security who demand
she help them. She’s not entirely willing, a memory of her mother’s downfall in
the hands of law enforcement clear in her mind. The agent assigned to her case
is compelling, however, and so she complies.
The crime(s) are fairly easily solved. After all, all Andrea
has to do is go to the past to see what happened. But there are some twists and
turns that stem from her ability, which keep matters interesting to the end.
And there’s a romance developing between her and the agent, which spiced things
up too. Andrea is an interesting character, as is Agent Strand. The book ends
at a good place that makes me wish that there are more stories or even a
complete series featuring the two in the works. I’d definitely read them.
I’m over a month behind posting book reviews here on my
reading blog. I spent a better part of February without finishing a single
book I began to read. Partly it was because the books were disappointing and I had
to give them up. Partly it was because I had other commitments that ate into my
reading time. Because of that, the previous post here is from January 21st, and
the first book I finished since that was on February 19th. The gap in posting
is just laziness. I’ve managed to read five books, so here’s a recap.
This is book ten in Chance’s Cassandra Palmer series.
Despite the length of the series, apparently only three months have passed,
which is difficult to believe, considering everything that’s happened. In the
past couple of books there has been a major war brewing, and this one ended
with a big battle, though not the war-ending one. All the books do. Other than
that, it was slightly mismatched. It began with one plot that was made out to
be a big deal, but ended up as something completely different, with the
original plot brought up as an afterthought in the epilogue. Still, it was
better than some of the books in the series—which I love, by the way. It
was evenly paced with slower chapters here and there where the reader can catch
their breath, and there was an exciting development considering the main trio, Cassie, Pritkin and Mircea. And now that Chance is publishing the books herself, we don’t have to wait years until the next one.
Becky Chambers’ books are always
lovely. Nothing dramatic ever happens, there’s no drama between characters and
everyone is always nice. Small frowns are dealt with hugs. There’s very little
plot in them too, but since I know to except that, it doesn’t usually
matter. But this book is basically a report of what four people sent on a
scientific mission to exoplanets did and saw. Nothing else. There’s a small build-up
for drama when the earth stops communicating with them, but it’s soon brushed
over. What disappointed me with this one, however, was the ending. It tries to
be ambivalent, to leave the fate of the characters to the reader’s imagination,
but it comes across as a copout, as if the author hasn’t bothered to take
responsibility for her creation. Other than that, it’s an imaginative,
well-written book like all her books, and kept me entertained up until the
disappointing end.
This was the first book in Jones’s new series toted as women’s
paranormal romance, a crossover between women’s fiction and paranormal romance
where the heroines are over forty. It was a fast-paced and easy to read. The
main characters, Defiance and Annette feel familiar from Jones’s excellent Charlie
Davidson series, with a similar friendship dynamics than Charlie and Cookie and
a habit of drinking all the coffee, so I loved them instantly. And if Defiance
isn’t an ADD personality like Charlie, she isn’t exactly fully focused either.
This isn’t a laugh-out-loud kind of book like the other series, but it has its
funny moments.
However, the book feels incomplete. It’s like I was reading
the first third of a longer book, with the characters being introduced and the
basis of the plot set. And then it ended. There are two more books coming and
I’m guessing the main action happens in those, but I can’t judge this book
based on what I don’t have.
I also have a small issue with Defiance’s age. She's
supposed to be forty-four, which is fine (I like reading characters my age). But
she has no past and she behaved like a twenty-something, with no wisdom or
experience gained. If the point of this series is to have middle-aged heroines,
I’d like them to show the life they have lived. They should
feel and act differently from the twenty-year-olds. But I liked Defiance and if
I imagine her to be twenty-something, I can forget all the rest. And since the
book ended with a whopper of a cliff-hanger, I’m definitely going to read the
next book.
This was invigorating like dragon’s
blood. I really like a tough heroine who
goes through a book kicking arse, and getting hers kicked in return. Val is as
tough as they come, but she pays for it too: her stress-levels are so high she
has developed asthma and needs therapy, both of which are well integrated into
the story. She has some other issues as well, mainly that she has had to
abandon everyone she loves, a daughter included, so that they won’t be killed
because of her job as a monster slayer.
The story itself is fairly straightforward. Val needs to
find a cure for her boss who has been poisoned with magic, and clear both of
their names in the process. Her path to it is littered with creatures from other
realms who are bent on killing her. Making matters worse is a dragon who wants
to use her as bait to lure in more creatures who want to kill her. It is action
from the beginning to the end.
As this is the first book in the series, there is some world-building
and character introductions, but everything is done organically along the
story. No backstory is given for why the world is populated with creatures from
other realms; it’s a fact of life for the characters. As a first person
narrative, we get only Val’s thoughts on things, and other characters remain
slightly distant. But they are all interesting. My favourite is Zav, the
arrogant dragon law-enforcer. The book hints that some sort of romantic bond
will form between him and Val, but there was no romance yet. All in all, a
great start for a series and I’ll definitely read the next book too.
Books 4-8 of 60 (I’ve had to lower my reading challenge target from the original 65.)
Ninth House is the first book for adults by the highly
popular (YA) fantasy author Leigh Bardugo, and her first that is set in the contemporary
world. It’s not a non-fantasy book, however, but full of magic and ghosts.
Despite the hype, it’s not Bardugo’s best work, and I’m not entirely sure I
would call it adult fiction, despite the themes of abuse, addiction and rape
among other things. Characters are more immature than in her books labelled for
young adult, and the story and the stakes are lighter.
Galaxy Stern, Alex, has seen ghosts her entire life, which
has brought nothing but trouble for her, because the only way she is able to
block them out is with drugs. Her life is a complete mess before she is twenty and
then a violent attack sends her to a hospital. There she is given a chance to
change all that. She is offered a place to study in Yale. Magic is abundant there
and to make sure the secret societies wielding it don’t abuse their powers,
there is a society to oversee them, and they need Alex’s skills.
For a person who hasn’t been to school since she was twelve,
Alex manages to make a passable effort at being a student, although most of her
time is taken by Lethe and her duties in overseeing the magical societies. For
a person who has recently survived a brutal attack that left her best friend
dead, Alex functions surprisingly well. And for a person who has used drugs all
her life, she does perfectly fine without them now.
Alex’s personal struggles aren’t the main focus of the
story, however. There are several mysteries that need solving. The most
important of them is a murder investigation that Alex can’t give up despite
orders to otherwise. Another mystery deals with a disappearance of her tutor,
which is unravelled slowly in chapters from his point of view. And then there
is a murder mystery from a century and a half ago that a ghost makes Alex
investigate.
The mysteries are not simultaneous, but the narrative presents
them at the same time. The story starts in the present with a teaser of what
has taken place so far, and then jumps back and forth between two earlier
points in time, plus Alex’s life before Yale, until reaching the present again,
where all the mysteries are solved. It takes a little getting used to, but after
that the pace of the book keeps good with no slack or unnecessary side-plots.
Despite the focus on solving crimes, the book doesn’t feel
like a thriller or crime fiction. Stakes are constantly high for Alex, with
violence and the possibility of losing her spot in the college looming over
her, yet the urgency doesn’t really make itself felt. Partly it has to do with
the non-linear narrative; just as the reader is invested in one story-line, the
narrative jumps to a different time; and partly it has to do with Alex waffling
about with no clear focus until the murder investigation takes up all her time.
It’s a ghost story, a story about magic and abuse of power, and homage to the
author’s alma mater.
Yet the story compels. The mysteries are suitably mysterious
and the final showdown is nothing I had anticipated. There are no cop-outs or
easy solutions. And there is a good build-up for the next book too, so I have
to assume one is in the making. All in all, a good story, if not a great book.
