The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner: review

3/5 stars on Goodreads

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

(Spoilers ahead. I tried to avoid anything explicit, but it’s impossible to review the book without them.)

The Thief (The Queen’s Thief 1) was originally published in 1996 and was well received with several awards and nominations. It’s now been reissued by a new publisher to reach a new generation of readers.

I belong to the generation that would’ve read the book when it originally came out, but I hadn’t. I think I would’ve loved it then. However, time has done its thing, and it hasn’t been altogether kind to it.

The book follows Gen, a thief who is made to join a mission to steal a piece out of mythology, located in an enemy kingdom. It’s either that or remain in the gaol, so off he goes with a nameless magus (if his name was ever given, it wasn’t used again), his two apprentices, and a man of arms.

They sneak into the enemy kingdom through mountains. It’s slow going and the narrative is slowed more by a bunch of completely unnecessary stories about gods. You can skip them all. With a great difficulty, they finally achieve their impossible task. And then things go wrong.

The book is narrated by Gen in the first-person point of view, and if I recall correctly, there weren’t many of those in fantasy back when the book first came out. It was a very odd choice for the story, and it wasn’t done very skilfully, especially when the story required other peoples’ point of view. The narrative was very impersonal, and in parts he just told what happened, even the dialogue. A brief sample of the next book at the end has a third person POV and it worked better.

Even though we spend the whole book with Gen, we learn absolutely nothing about him. I don’t know his age even. He has no inner monologue. He observes the others, but rarely comments and never in a meaningful way that would relate to him. Even when he is in charge, the reader isn’t with him, except for the brief part where he does the actual stealing.

The narrative is so impersonal, that for the entire book, I was convinced Gen is a woman. I know he was referred to as ‘he’ already at the beginning, but nothing about him made me believe it. He didn’t sound like a man inside his head. He didn’t even need to shave after having been in a gaol for a long time, even though a great show was made of washing him otherwise. I kept expecting the other shoe to drop, but it never did. Nevertheless, I think the story worked fine, if not better, with my version of him.

The reason for the odd narrative is revealed at the end when it turns out that the whole story is a lie. The reason Gen plays everything so close to his chest is because he lies not only to his companions but to the reader as well. And I hated it. It’s not the clever twist the author probably intended it to be. It’s just disgustingly lazy, aching to ‘it was just a dream’ ending. Nothing we learned about him is true (except the gender, apparently). So, in a way, it was good I wasn’t invested in him, and that I imagined him as a woman. My version was as true as what the readers got.

The stupid ending ruined the book, prompting me to give it two stars. However, since I was fairly entertained until that point, and liked most of the story, slow and old-fashioned though it was, I’m giving it three stars. But I won’t be reading the rest of the series.

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

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

 

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

 

The Golden Enclaves ends The Scholomance trilogy, and what a wild ride it has been. El, the sourly mage-to-be, has spent four years trying not to become an evil maleficer in the school for mages that has tried its best to kill her. She’s desperately trying to avoid fulfilling the prophecy of her as a destroyer of enclaves, the safe havens of mages. She’s now out of the school, which she has destroyed, and she’s saved everyone. All except Orion Lake, the boy she’s reluctantly come to love.

The book begins right from the cliff-hanger ending of the previous one. Orion has pushed El out of the school and stayed behind to fight a maw-mouth, the worst monster there is, a hungering blob that devours the living, never stopping. She tries to save him, but he won’t let her.

Grieving and traumatised, she’s moping in her mother’s yurt in the healing commune, when her friends from London enclave ask her help in killing a maw-mouth, a near-impossible feat which she’s done before. Someone’s attacking the enclaves by emptying them from their protective magic, which either plunges them into the void, killing everyone inside, or weakens the wards, opening them for monster attacks.

With nothing better to do, she sets out to help, with her friends facilitating her, as her ability to survive the outside world is sketchy at best, thanks to her isolated childhood in the commune. And then she learns the secret behind the enclaves, the evil magic they’re based on. She has to decide, if she wants to save the enclaves, or become the destroyer of the prophecy after all. It’s not an easy decision and nothing in the book is black and white, good or evil. Everything she does has consequences, and some of them are catastrophic.

This was an excellent book and a wonderful conclusion to the trilogy. The book moves smoothly from one disaster to another, forcing El to reveal exactly how powerful she is. All her closest friends are with her, ready to help, which she’s sort of coming to terms with. She isn’t without enemies who have waited for her to graduate for a long time, but she also learns that she has allies and a family that loves her.

And she doesn’t give up on Orion, if her plan basically is to kill the maw-mouth that got him. But he has a surprise for her—and the reader. Orion has been a tragic figure from the start, an exploited hero who wants nothing more than to help others by killing monsters. I badly wanted a good ending for him, even if it would mean putting him out of his misery. It’s not an easy decision for El, but in the end, she knows what she must do—which was nothing I could’ve predicted.

An ending to a great trilogy is seldom perfect, but I am perfectly satisfied with this one. It’s not a fairy-tale or happily-ever-after ending, but it’s good enough for everyone, and it suits the world and the characters. And El may even have found a way to become content after all.

A Sense of Danger by Jennifer Estep: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

A Sense of Danger by Jennifer Estep

A Sense of Danger is urban fantasy spy mystery and romance that was meant to be a stand-alone and reads as such. It follows Charlotte and Desmond who work for Section 47 in Washington DC, a black-ops agency employing paramortals, people with special abilities, who hunt paramortal terrorists. Not only is the agency highly secret, ordinary humans don’t know about paramortals.

Charlotte Locke is in her mid-thirties and an analyst for the Section. Her magic allows her to see written errors and untruths, which is useful when tracking evil people. She can also hear if a person is speaking the truth or lying, and she can sense danger. She’s very good at her job, but frustrated, because her immediate supervisor keeps blocking her reports. On the private front, she’s swamped with debt from medical bills, which forces her to have a second job as a waitress.

Desmond Percy is a cleaner, aka an assassin for the Section, and excellent at his job. He can manipulate energy from electricity, which among other things allows him to heal fast. He’s recently survived an attempt to his life that killed his partner, and he’s on a private mission to find a mole inside the Section who leaked their location to a terrorist he’s been after. This brings him to Charlotte, who is currently investigating a terrorist connected with his.

They’re ordered to work together in a sting operation to capture the terrorist. But they’re privately trying to find the mole, all the while knowing that everything they do will be leaked to the terrorist if they’re not careful. And they know too that they both have private agendas, which makes it difficult for them to trust each other.

This was an action-packed mystery with enough twists that I couldn’t immediately guess who the mole was and even then I didn’t know everything. It’s told from the first-person point of view of both Charlotte and Desmond, giving the reader a good insight to them. I liked them, but I especially liked that Charlotte wasn’t a nerdy or stupid damsel who stumbles on the truth and needs to be rescued by Desmond from her ineptitude. She was a stone-cold killer who went after the mole with unwavering determination. That left Desmond with a supporting role, but he was mature enough to handle it. Romance was slow burn, but satisfying.

The only thing that left me wanting was Desmond’s backstory. He’s the son of a man high-up in charge of the Section and their relationship isn’t good. Much is made of it, but the father doesn’t even make an appearance. I found this especially surprising since Desmond had forged the father’s clearance for his operation. I kept expecting some kind of confrontation or consequence for it, but it didn’t come.

Since this was meant as a stand-alone, the ending is conclusive, but it also leaves an opening for more books. And luckily, the next one is arriving already in November. Looking forward to reading it.

Only Bad Options by Jennifer Estep: review

5/5 stars on Goodreads

 

Only Bad Options by Jennifer Estep

 

Jennifer Estep is a prolific writer of fantasy and urban fantasy, but Only Bad Options, Galactic Bonds 1, is her first sci-fi novel. It has action and some romance, but mostly it’s about the trauma of being abandoned and maybe finding someone to ease the loneliness with.

The world is a combination of science and magic, a collection of psionic abilities, where the latter complements the first, like in making new technological innovations. Humanity has spread all over the galaxy, there’s faster than light travel, and no non-human people. Everything is clean and technologically advanced, and if there’s suffering, it isn’t shown. Much of the world is derivative, but everything works within the framework of the book.

There is a constant war going on between aristocratic Regals who mostly have psionic abilities, a technological alliance no one knows anything about, and a third faction that mostly control the raw material like minerals. All the technological advancements are in the service of the war.

Vesper Quill is a developmental engineer working for a Regal family that manufactures weapons and spaceships for the ruler of the galaxy. She has some magic that helps her see how tech works, which she has put to a good use, only to have others steal her designs.

A spaceship has crashed and she’s the only one who knows it was because of a technical flaw in the design. When she tells the leader of the family the truth, she suddenly finds her neck deep in trouble on a war zone. Her only options are to die or to find an ally that is likeliest to survive.

Kyrion Coldren is a Regal and the leader of Arrows, the ruler’s special forces who fight with a combination of weapons and psionic abilities. He’s feared throughout the galaxy as the ruler’s assassin. When he’s injured in a battle, he finds himself being saved by Vesper, which forms a galactic bond between them—a connection between two people, romantic and non-romantic, both metaphysical and physical—a much desired but incredibly rare occurrence. And he instantly wants to break it, by killing Vesper if nothing else works.

Little by little, they form a truce and then alliance. She’ll help him figure out who tried to kill him, and he’ll help her to reveal the truth about the design flaw in the spaceships. After that, they’ll break the bond and go their separate ways. But nothing is ever as easy as that.

This was a great book with mature characters who had believable backstories and a lot of baggage. The romance was very slow, taking all the steps from enemies to neutrals and then friends, without quite reaching the lovers stage. That will hopefully happen in the latter books. The narrative was first person from the point of view of both Vesper and Kyrion, which gave a deeper insight into them. I liked both, separately and together.

There weren’t all that many side characters and only a couple of them had a meaningful role in the story. Bad guys were thoroughly bad, but there were a few characters that might have been either way, making them a bit more interesting.

The book was full of action, intrigue, and betrayals, some healing and a lot of self-discovery. It didn’t quite have the emotional impact that the best of Estep’s books have, but I’m sure that’ll change in the upcoming books. The ending was satisfying, but open enough for me to look forward to reading what happens next.

The Viper by J. R. Ward: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

The Viper by J. R. Ward

The Viper is the third book in Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp, a spin-off series of the original BDB. It follows a group of vampires and wolven falsely imprisoned in a cruel prison, sometimes for centuries.

Kane, a vampire aristocrat, has been in the prison for two centuries accused of killing his shellan (wife). In the first book, he sacrificed himself by detonating a bomb to save two people fleeing the prison, and though he didn’t die, he’s in such a bad shape that he can’t heal himself.

Nadya is a nurse caring for Kane in the prison. She’s not a prisoner, but she doesn’t want to live in the outside world because an attack has left her physically deformed. As she takes care of Kane, she starts to think of him as more than a patient, someone she could love—if only he wasn’t about to die.

The third book starts where the previous ended. The remaining two prisoners of the group, with the help of third who managed to escape in the previous book, escape the prison and take Kane with them. They take him to a wolven healer/goddess, who heals him by making him a vessel for a viper god, which essentially makes him a viper-shifter. The first thing he does is head back to prison to save Nadya.

This was maybe the best book in the series so far. We’re familiar with the people and the setting, and Kane and Nadya had known each other for a long time, so the romance doesn’t feel forced or instantaneous. There’s a solid side-plot between Apex, one of the prisoners, and Callum, a wolven, and the way it was left in this book promises a difficult journey for them in the next one. And V’s drama was at minimum, a rather sweet side-quest with Payne, his sister that has mostly been absent in the BDB books.

However, the romance remained secondary again, buried under the action and other drama, and its emotional impact was a bit light. But if you’re looking for UF action with a side of a romance, this series is great for that.