No Land for Heroes by Cal Black: review

2/5 stars on Goodreads

No Land for Heroes by Cal Black

No Land for Heroes is a Western fantasy set in a world much like post-Civil War US, with elves, dragons, and other non-human people. It has a solid plot at its core. Milly Berry, an elf, is a veteran of a civil war. She’s done some questionable things during the war and is badly traumatised. Now she only wants to live in peace in an out-of-the map town as its deputy. But her former commander and the source of much of her trauma finds her and she must defend herself, her family, and friends.

The book didn’t settle with the core story though. There were several point-of-view characters with their own stories that didn’t contribute to the plot (I’m looking at you Jeb). Gilbert, the love interest, sort of had a backstory that mattered, but he was made to sit out the part that concerned him. It created a very messy story that left the reader feeling let down for investing in the unimportant characters. Added to that were confusing details, like Milly having twins, only for it to turn out one was adopted, but only after a conversation that made me think less of her people. No explanation was given why, even though we did learn who the mother of the other child was.

Characters were unlikeable and their interactions odd. Milly with her traumas was the only one worth following. Gilbert was a jerk who kept propositioning women ‘for good fun’ and passing judgement on everyone he met. I wouldn’t have chosen him as the love interest, but luckily that part of the story was at minimum and unromantic anyway. Jeb, for all that his story was an add on, was the only one who felt like a real person.

My biggest issue was with the worldbuilding. It was basically a Western setting, a frontier town in a world that was recovering from a civil war to free slaves. The core plot fit that setting, and would’ve worked fine in real world too. The fantasy elements didn’t feel integral to the world or the story. The dragon existed solely as a gimmick that had to be killed in the end, and the magic was mostly to heal wounds that weren’t even life-threatening. Religions were derivative and glued on, and the non-human people had no real purpose except to exist as oddities.

The worst thing by far, however, was replacing the Native Americans with elves. When the world is so obviously based on ours, replacing an integral part of it with fantasy creatures who then appropriate the entire culture with tomahawks, tipis, and mohawks stood out like a sore spot. I’m not an indigenous person, but even I found it really upsetting. If you want elves, give them their own culture. Black people too were replaced by orcs who worked as servants and were referred to by their grey skin. I was slow to figure that one out though. And why does the banker family in a fantasy world have Jewish names and their own special religion, Carpenter, by which they’re constantly referred to?

All in all, this was a mess that could’ve used a sensitivity reader and heavy editing. But if you like Westerns with a strong female lead and can ignore the fantasy elements, then this is for you.

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

In the Serpent’s Wake by Rachel Hartman: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

In the Serpent's Wake by Rachel Hartman

In the Serpent’s Wake continues directly from where the first book, Tess of the Road, ended. Tess is journeying again, this time over the sea to the freezing, uncharted southern archipelagos full of mysterious peoples, in search of another world serpent to save her quigutl friend Pathka, and to spy for her queen. No one knows the way, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.

Unlike the first book, this isn’t a journey (voyage?) into Tess herself, her trauma and redemption. She has been sent to observe how a rivalling nation treats the southern colonies they’ve conquered, and whether or not her queen should do something about it. She isn’t entirely free from her past though. There’s Spira, a dragon she has wronged, and Will, the man who is the cause of Tess’s trauma.

Tess isn’t the sole point of view character anymore. We follow Spira through their identity crisis, and Countess Marga, the leader of the expedition, who is forced to face the consequences of her privilege; Hama, the Watcher protecting the serpent, and occasional other characters, like Tess’s brother-in-law Jacomo who had followed her in the shadows through the first book to his own redemption story. Not all of them moved the story forward. Spira’s story especially was more a parallel one without impact, although it was interesting, and some were unnecessary in hindsight and only lengthened the book.

This is a large story told in a relatively short space, and one that takes it well out of young adult category to adult fantasy. Over and over again, Tess witnesses the oppression and subduing of the native peoples in the hands of the outsiders, an open criticism of the colonialism in our world and the harm it has caused. She has a great need to help them, but everything she tries either fails, makes things worse, or is met with scorn, as she behaves like only the ‘civilised’ world can bring salvation to the natives. In the end, she learns to ask, what do the people themselves need and want.

By the time the story reaches that point, the book rather abruptly ends. Tess would finally have the means to navigate the natives’ lands to the serpent, only for her journey to end and Pathka to leave with the natives. She is sent home with a vague prophecy of the task ahead of her. It left her story so open that I hope there will be at least one more book that gives her a conclusion. I would hate to see her journey end here.

Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman

Tess of the Road is a spin-off of Hartman’s wonderful Seraphina duology. They’re set in a world of shapeshifting dragons, lizard-like quigutl, and humans. It’s a pre-technology world, but with clever gadgets the quigutl invent, like long-distance communication devices.

Tess is Seraphina’s human half-sister. She’s seventeen, deeply unhappy, and suffering from a trauma that is only alluded to at first. Her sole focus is to get her twin sister Jeanne into a good marriage, hoping it’ll absolve her past and set her free. But when the marriage is accomplished and she’s still being punished, she walks away—and keeps walking.

A chance encounter with a childhood friend, a quigutl Pathka, gives her a destination and purpose. He wants to find a world serpent, a creature from quigutl mythology that no one else believes even exists. Together he and Tess, disguised as a young man, set out to find a creature that calls Pathka in his dreams.

The journey to the snake is long and eventful. But the events themselves aren’t as important to Tess as what she learns on the journey about herself. Little by little, the tangles of her past open, and the reader learns about the trauma that haunts her. She has imagined herself in love with a young man who promised to marry her, only to get her pregnant, and then leave. But even that story has deeper layers, and the trauma they have caused rushes to the surface in bursts of violence when events trigger her.

It's not an easy road to recovery for her, and in her eagerness, she often causes more harm—even irreparable—than good. But by the time of the final call to come home, she’s grown and healed enough to know, that it isn’t her home anymore.

This was a wonderful book about healing and forgiving oneself. Tess started as a troubled girl and grew into a self-confident, determined woman. Pathka, as her companion, was an excellent character too, suitably alien and with his own family trouble that mirrored Tess’s relationship with her mother. Seraphina seemed like a different person when seen through the eyes of an outsider but remained unique. Other characters were more fleeting, existing to help Tess on her journey and then left behind. Some will perhaps resurface in the latter book, but if Seraphina duology is anything to go by, permanent, romantic relationships won’t be the goal.

This is marketed as young adult fantasy, and as a growth-story, it is that. But the trauma of Tess’s past and her journey to forgiveness are both triggering and profound in a way that adults will appreciate the book as well. I will definitely read the next book too.

The Heretic Royal by G.A. Aiken: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Heretic Royal is the third book in The Scarred Earth Saga and exactly the kind of bat-sh*t craziness I was hoping for. None of the characters are nice or pleasant, and none of them like each other very much, yet they form a warm—if homicidal—whole. Everything is chaotic, no one’s doing anything proactive to oust the bad queen, and dragons do their best to make things worse.

The book begins where the previous one ended, with the arrival of dragons from Aiken’s earlier series—a cliff-hanger that made it an agonisingly long wait for this book. They instantly amp up the insanity level, and most of the book is about Keeley and her family dealing with them, the war on the background.

There are several point of view charcaters, some of which don’t have much to do. The main ones are (on paper anyway) the fourth eldest sister Ainsley, and Gruff, a centaur warrior asked to guard her. They’re the romantic couple of the book, but the romance is extremely low key among the chaos. It basically takes place during a couple of chapters at the end of the book. Still, I liked them both. They made a good couple and spent most of the book interacting with each other, so the romance didn’t spring out of nowhere.

The rest of the book is spent in crazy antics with seemingly no plot, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. There was a small cliff-hanger (mountain dropper?) at the end, but what will draw me back are the characters that I love one and all. Can’t wait to read the next one.

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

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen: review

3/5 stars on Goodreads

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy is a retelling of Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail movie with zombies, in an original world of islands, complex mythology, and a wild-west vibe. The movie is one of my all-time favourite romantic comedies, so I had high hopes for this book.

There were some changes with the premise. In the movie, the romantic pair are business rivals. The bigger business eventually forces the smaller to close, a cause for permanent animosity between the pair in real life, while they become close through correspondence without knowing the identity of their friend. The romance hangs on whether she can forgive him for putting her out of business.

In the book, Hart, a marshal keeping a frontier town free of zombies, and Mercy, an owner of a funeral home, don’t have such a logical cause for their dislike. They hate each other at sight for no reason, which makes them rather unlikeable and weakens the premise. They too start corresponding, and find the other a kindred spirit while continuing to dislike each other in real life.

The pivotal moment, the attempt to meet for the first time, is copied from the movie. It doesn’t work as well as the author maybe hoped, and only managed to yank this reader out of the world of the book and remembering the original, which won the comparison. As the premise is different, the consequences of the meeting are different too. The romance basically hangs on whether she can forgive him for lying.

The book was at its best when it relied on its own worldbuilding and original story. For most of the book, the characters had their own stories going on that didn’t really touch. He had an apprentice to teach and needed to get over some trauma of his past, and she had the funeral home to save from a random jerk. She didn’t write to him to ask business advice, for example, like in the original (basically asking him to work against his own company).

Hart and Mercy improved on acquaintance. For the first part of the book, which follows the movie, the romance grew through letters. For the latter part, the romance was a rather run of the mill series of heat and heartache. Mercy handles her business problem with the help of her family. Hart handles the zombie problem with self-sacrifice. The latter brings the romance to a point in a rather forced fashion. It’s tear-inducing, but I didn’t find it terribly romantic.

The book was a mixed bag for me. I liked the world, which was much more complex than the story required. I liked Hart’s storyline, especially the parts with his apprentice, but it didn’t need to be that long. Mercy’s storyline with her family was nice, but much, much too long as well, and it took too long for her business trouble to solve. Put together and added with the romance, the plot was a mess that could’ve used chopping. I would’ve left the movie retelling out and gone with the author’s original story. It worked for the characters and the world best.

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