An immortal wizard walks into the World Series of Poker... : "The Incrementalists" by Steven Brust and Skyler White

It sounds like the setup to a bad joke. A guy sits alone in a bar in Vegas, waiting for his next poker game to start. He flirts with the waitress, has a drink, thinks about the fact that his ex-girlfriend recently committed suicide; nothing really to set him apart from the sludge of humanity around him. But underneath his baseball cap sits a mind that's been reincarnated through dozens of bodies over the course of many centuries-- a mind that remembers every era of history and every time he used his magic to change things for the better. And the best part is, our wizard isn't alone. He's got 200 friends just like him-- a secret society who's been magically nudging people toward working for the greater good, operating between the lines since the dawn of time. This is the premise of Steven Brust and Skyler White's The Incrementalists-- the foundation for a story that is simultaneously fantastical and everyday, mixing magic both wondrous and mundane. 

'A Thousand Perfect Things' by Kay Kenyon

Hey everyone, sorry for my absence the past few weeks-- I went on vacation and then started a new job, and it's taken me until now to get my blogging brain stuffed back inside my head. :)

I'm returning with a review of A Thousand Perfect Things by Kay Kenyon. I want to start by saying that this book surprised me. I've never read anything by Kay Kenyon before, so when I got the ARC of her newest book I didn't know what to expect, and my reaction was mixed.

Like a lot of books, I started it on the train on my way to work, which made it really awkward when I started crying less than twenty pages in. So, something I haven't talked about here is that my grandfather passed away in July, at age 85 and after a long battle with heart and lung disease. We were very close; I'm still trying to metabolize the fact that he's gone, and I'm pretty sure I'll be trying for a long time to come. So reading about our protagonist Tori and her bond with her grandfather was a wrench-- even more so when Sir Charles takes sick and dies (the part that had me in tears-- good work, Ms. Kenyon), leaving behind a family who thought he was crazy, and an idea that consumes Tori's focus and is the basis for the entire story to come.

'Casino Royale' by Ian Fleming





I was in middle school the first time I saw a James Bond movie. My brother and I were hanging out at our grandparents' house on New Year's Eve and some network had on a marathon. "For Your Eyes Only" was, to my twelve-year-old brain, a feast. Dramatic, suspenseful, ridiculous, full of explosions and just enough sex to get all my hormones and adrenaline fizzing at once. I was enthralled, not only by the spectacle, but by the character of Bond-- this dashing rake who charmed his way into opium warehouses and ladies' ski suits with equal felicity, fought bad guys while running, driving or rock climbing, prevented the sabotage of the British navy and looked great doing all of it.

In that light, maybe it's weird that I'm only just now digging into his source material-- starting, of course, at the beginning. Casino Royale happens to be one of my favorite Bond movies, so I was excited to sink my teeth into the superspy's origin story. As much for my own self-analysis as anything else, I was curious to investigate the source of Bond's popularity. What is so engaging about this man, this figure, that he's managed to occupy a significant place in our cultural consciousness for over half a century? Based just on Casino Royale, at least, the sad fact is that I have no idea.

'A Matter of Blood' by Sarah Pinborough

The opening act of Sarah Pinborough's urban fantasy horror trilogy is dark. It's gory, it's harsh and unflinching in its descriptions of an ugly world; no romps with city-dwelling fairies here. It's urban fantasy at its most brutal, illuminating a bleak potential future where-- as our killer makes a habit of pointing out-- nothing is sacred. It's that idea of the sacrosanct that winds its way throughout the book, touching each of the characters in turn, leading the jaded Detective Jones to a thorough examination of not only the ways in which his society is broken, but in which he is as well.

'Doll Bones' by Holly Black

Still working on my review of Sarah Pinborough's A Matter of Blood, but I finished Doll Bones this morning and couldn't stop myself from writing about it instantly.

'Bronze Gods' by A. A. Aguirre

So, in complete contrast to my reaction to Fade to Black, Bronze Gods surprised me by how much I loved it. I won't say I didn't expect to enjoy myself, because a crime fighting team in a steampunk universe with magic sounds like bona fide enjoyment material in my book. But I expected fluff-- a quick read, nothing heavy. I was pleasantly surprised to discover instead a wholly engaging read with characters that leapt off the page and a world I wanted to explore every nook and cranny of.

Fade to Black (Rojan Dizon #1) by Francis Knight

Holy funemployment, Batman, two in one week! 

So I hope that whoever wrote the jacket copy for Fade to Black has their own publishing deal, because they did a great job. Based on a quick scan, the book sounded edgy, dangerous and exciting. It was featured on bn.com the week I bought my new nook, and I was SO close to paying for it... But, luckily for me, I borrowed it from a friend first. It turns out I would've been pretty mad had I shelled out money for it. 

The book isn't terrible, and there are some aspects of it that are great-- okay, actually, I take that back, there is one aspect of it that is great, and that is the worldbuilding. The city felt real, the descriptions vivid even when they weren't overly verbose, and the atmosphere thick enough to taste. It's clear that Francis Knight put a lot of thought into her world, that she knows it well down to the small details. But it's useless to have a great world if you don't populate it with great characters, and in that Knight failed pretty spectacularly.

There are three main characters in the book-- the protagonist, bounty hunter and pain mage Rojan; the girl swordfighter Jake; and her best friend / would-be lover Pasha. Pasha is easily the most interesting of the three. He's a pain mage like Rojan, with a painful past-- he was sold into slavery to be used as fodder for another pain mage's power and endured years of constant abuse, all when he was mostly a kid. He's in love with Jake, but she's got the same past trauma that manifests in a deep aversion to being touched, therefore taking intimacy of any kind off the table. He sticks by her because it's their secret mission to find other people who've been sold to the mages (like Rojan's niece, which is what crosses his path with theirs) and get them to freedom. He's pretty badass and bold when it comes to acting on behalf of others, but emotionally passive when it comes to himself; a nice duality. He got flatter and more predictable as the book went on, but he was the only one who made me feel any real sympathy.

Jake has all the trappings of an interesting powerful female, but unfortunately she isn't any of those things. She's a statue on a pedestal to Rojan, not a person. Some reviewers have compared this construct to the archetypes found in classic noir, but that's not a comparison I can get behind. She's certainly no femme fatale, and while it seems Knight intended for her to play the part of the elusive ice queen who gets under the private eye's skin, she misses the mark. She doesn't need Rojan's help, so there's no give and take in their relationship, and she's so closed off emotionally that most of Rojan's response to her seemed to be based on physical attraction-- which is fine, but isn't a carrier for the intrigue and emotional desire Rojan claimed to feel for her.

But my real problem with Jake is that Knight had a great opportunity to paint the picture of a strong, independent woman who had overcome adversity to take control over her life, and didn't. Jake is a pit fighter, really strong and agile, and she's a subversive freedom fighter working behind the scenes to go against the rule of law. But in the moments I most wanted her to shine, she caved. Pasha kills a man so Jake doesn't have to (she's very proud of her no-kill record in the pits) and she drives him away, a disproportionate response that's clearly a device to get her and Rojan alone, and one that makes her look unreasonable and unstable. 

Then, in spite of her explicitly stated aversion to touch, Rojan kisses her and she doesn't even fight back. Instead it's like an eye-opener-- oh, I really was fine with making out all this time, who knew? Probably pretty disturbing to read if you're a survivor of that kind of abuse. And the icing on the disappointment cake was that she never overcame her fear and got back at the man who enslaved her. Instead, another clumsy plot device had Rojan step in to do it for her. I liked Jake alright, but she didn't grab me either as a heroine or as a love interest, and in terms of the power and agency of women in the book she left a lot to be desired.

She got a really kick-ass entrance, though, I'll say that much.

And Rojan. Oh, Rojan. I can't decide if this is how the author thinks jaded and world-weary men actually think and talk, or if she personally knows someone who's simultaneously this misogynistic and this boring, but either way, he doesn't play well. He hovers in this limbo between actually being a womanizing sleazebag and only pretending to be one-- it's like the author wanted to make him unlikable and have a bad attitude towards women, but didn't have the stomach to take it all the way. He isn't like Barney Stinson or Han Solo-- I never once bought the image of Rojan as a cad who treats women like they're disposable because he's afraid of emotional intimacy. The book opens with him getting notes from the three women he's seeing who've all just found out about each other and trash his apartment for it, and he talks a lot-- incessantly-- about how bad he is at relationships, how much of a womanizer he is, etc. But we never meet any of the girlfriends, or even see first-hand what they do to his apartment, so there are no consequences for his jerk behavior. There's never even a hint of the fact that he might want something more out of relationships, just more casual contempt for the idea of them.

All this means that when Jake finally appears on the scene and Rojan suddenly starts spouting off about how much he likes her and how she makes him want to be a better man, the intended revelation falls extremely flat. Because Jake isn't as well rounded as I'd like, and certainly neither is Rojan, I didn't feel the supposed connection between them at all. The author kept talking about it, but it never grabbed me in the gut. Especially when contrasted with Mikani and Ritsuko in Bronze Gods (which I'll be reviewing next), who had chemistry and tension enough to drive me to drink, I felt like both Rojan and the author were just going through the motions of the typical transformative falling-in-love experience, rather than actually... well... experiencing it.

I didn't completely hate this book. It was a quick read and it wasn't the worst urban fantasy I've ever read. But it disappointed me so much in relation to my expectations that it left a sour taste in my mouth. Ultimately I wanted the author to delve into Rojan's actual weaknesses-- his fears, his self doubts, his shitty relationship with his brother (which is the only arena in which I really felt sympathy with him), his dead mother-- instead of having them all glossed over and then neatly tied up at the end. I'm not even sure how the author plans to make a sequel happen, since so many of the problems were resolved by the end of the book. Hopefully the next one won't give such token nods to Rojan's issues, and will have a supporting cast that's a lot more fleshed out. Unfortunately, unless it's recommended to me by someone I trust, I won't be taking the time to find out.

Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers

So, what's a little ridiculous about this is that I actually read an advance copy of this book in March and had the review ready to go at the time the book was released, which was mid April. And then real life interfered in a big three-strikes-you're-out sort of way, and I sort of forgot about the internet for awhile. SO. Here, at long last, is my review of Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers. It's a bit shorter than my last few have been, because as it's probably clear I'm still struggling with posting more frequently here, I'm going to try a few shorter reviews in the hopes that they'll go faster.

'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' by Laini Taylor

For my first review back from what was, admittedly, a hiatus that stretched the meaning of the word past its breaking point, I wanted to come back with a bang. And Daughter of Smoke and Bone is nothing if not full of bang.