Book Review: The Queen of Raiders by Sarah Kozloff
Posted on March 3, 2020 20 Comments
I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.
The Queen of Raiders by Sarah Kozloff
Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Book 2 of The Nine Realms
Publisher: Tor Books (February 18, 2020)
Length: 487 pages
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Not wasting a beat, The Queen of Raiders by Sarah Kozloff plunges back into the war-ravaged world of The Nine Realms, picking up where A Queen in Hiding left off. This review assumes you’ve read the first book and may contain discussions about the previous volume’s events, so proceed with caution!
With Queen Cressa of Weirandale dead, the crown now belongs to her daughter Cérulia—except the young princess is still in exile, hiding in the countryside while the capital still crawls with traitors and spies. No longer a child, Cérulia leaves the safety of her adoptive home and makes her way across the mountains towards Oromondo, the nation responsible for killing her mother. Traveling under different aliases to hide her true identity, she uses her magical gift to communicate with animals, beseeching them to guide her way and lead her to allies who would help her avenge Queen Cressa.
Meanwhile, scholar turned soldier Thelan finds himself in way over his head, leading a ragtag band of rebels to harry the efforts of the Oros, whose invading hordes have left death and destruction all across the Free States. Thelan’s Raiders may be small, but their network is vast, with hidden resistance fighters situated in unexpected places. With Cérulia’s help, they will have even more ways to gather information, using her powers to find resources and uncover enemy troop movements. But will it be enough to make a difference? There’s still a long way to go for Cérulia to win back her throne, and the raiders face threats from all directions.
As the second installment of four, The Queen of Raiders starts by throwing readers right into the action. Now that Queen Cressa is dead, this book shifts its focus to Cérulia (who adopts multiple bird-themed names to stay anonymous) as well as Thelan, who was mostly a side character in the first book. Weaving in and out of these narratives are also several threads following individuals that give us a glimpse into the happenings around the world, including perspectives from inside Weirandale as well as from the enemy Oros camp. Slowly but steadily, we are tying the various storylines together and a larger picture is emerging.
And if A Queen in Hiding felt like a prologue, then this sequel feels like the opening chapters of a greater saga, officially establishing Cérulia as the focal point of the series. While she was introduced as a little girl in the previous volume, in this novel she official comes into her own as a young woman on a mission. I was also thrilled that her talent got a lot of attention, with her calling upon the creatures of the forest to come to her aid, including the hawks, eagles, and owls that serve as her eyes in the sky. A simple concept it may be, but Kozloff has managed to incorporate the power of talking to animals into many an epic scene.
Honestly, it’s hard to fault this one for feeling like a bridge book. Just as calling A Queen in Hiding a prologue was not meant as a slight, I don’t want to sound too disparaging here either, particularly since I believe that a “bridge book” was the author’s intention. With all four novels coming out in quick succession, I’m beginning to view this series as one single, gargantuan volume. While The Queen of Raiders contained an intro, a middle, and a climax and conclusion, in many ways it also reads like a stepping-stone to the next installment, because of the inherent assumption that the reader will be sticking around until the final destination. It’s a steep demand for your time and investment to be sure, but based on how much I enjoyed myself, I think it’ll be worth it.
In sum, I believe the series is still in the stages of establishing a foundation at this point, setting up for bigger things to come. Yet the journey so far has been well-paced and entertaining, and I am by no means losing interest in Cérulia’s journey. In fact, now I find myself even more invested in her quest to regain her rightful place as queen, especially in light of the jaw-dropping events at the end of this book. As we’re officially at the halfway point of this series, I have even greater expectations and hopes for the next one!
More on The BiblioSanctum:
Review of A Queen in Hiding (Book 1)
Excerpt: Re-Coil by by J.T. Nicholas
Posted on March 2, 2020 9 Comments
The BiblioSanctum is pleased to be participating in the tour for Re-Coil by J.T. Nicholas, a high-concept science fiction standalone that has been described as The Expanse meets Altered Carbon! Today we are sharing an exciting excerpt from the book, available March 3, 2020 from Titan Books wherever books are sold! Check it out, and be sure to also visit the other stops on the tour!
Re-Coil by J.T. Nicholas
Out on a salvage mission with a skeleton crew, Carter Langston is murdered by animated corpses left behind on this ship. Yet in this future, everyone’s consciousness backup can be safely downloaded into a brand-new body, and all you’d lose are the memories of what happened between your last backup and your death. But when Langston wakes up in his new body, he is immediately attacked in the medbay and has to fight once again for his life—and his immortality. Because this assassin aims to destroy his core forever.
Determined to find his shipmates and solve this evolving mystery, Langston locates their tech whiz Shay Chan, but two members are missing and perhaps permanently killed. Langston and Chan are soon running for their lives with the assassin and the corporation behind him in hot pursuit.
What Langston and Chan ultimately find would signal the end of humanity. What started as a salvage mission just might end up saving the world.
Excerpt from Re-Coil by J.T. Nicholas, published by Titan Books. Copyright © 2020 by J.T. Nicholas
I moved to the first row of acceleration chairs and turned my attention to the first corpse. The coil was bio-female, young, and, at least when imagined with the full flush of life, attractive. It showed no signs of decompression or trauma, and the eyes remained, thankfully, closed. I tried to stop thinking of the coil as a person—what made it a person was safely locked away in the core, anyway. It was just a shell, and one that had outlived its usefulness.
The rational part of my mind knew that to be true. It didn’t stop the twisting in my guts as I pulled the frozen body forward, and moved the auburn hair out of the way, baring the hollow in the base of the skull. The laser cutter and the knife did their work, and in a few minutes, I was sliding another core into the bag on my harness.
The work was grisly, but not particularly difficult. The entire coil and core were engineered so that it took only a passing familiarity with anatomy to affect the retrieval. It wasn’t the sort of task that required my full attention—in fact, it was the sort of task that begged for that attention to be turned elsewhere. Sarah, why are the coils not showing signs of decompression?
Insufficient data at this time. I ground my teeth together. Guess. As you wish, Langston. The first and most likely cause is sufficient time during decompression for the fluids and gasses in the body to adapt to the changing pressures. Other possible causes decrease greatly in probability and include flash freezing, absence of fluids or gasses in the system to begin with, or administration of outside agents to prevent decompression.
I knew Sarah was right—no one spent long in space without garnering a basic understanding of how decompression sickness and sudden decompression worked. Yet, at the same time, none of her answers made any sense. Who would sit idly in their acceleration chairs while the pressure in the cabin slowly went from one atmosphere down to vacuum, presumably taking with it all the breathable air? The coils showed no signs of flash freezing or desiccation, and the only outside agent I knew of that could prevent decompression was a vacc suit. What had happened to these people?
I moved down the line of chairs, the laser cutter doing its gruesome work, and the little pouch of cores at my hip slowly filled. I was down to three rows when I felt a slight shiver course through the derelict’s hull.
I paused in my work and waited for a moment. The shiver came again, and then grew into a steady vibration. I felt the faintest tug pulling me toward the back of the cabin. The ship was accelerating.
“Persephone?” I asked aloud. At the same time directing a mental, Status? at Sarah.
“What the hell’s going on over there, Langston?” Miller demanded. “Our sensors show that the derelict’s engines just came online.”
The vessel is powering up and accelerating toward Sol, Sarah confirmed.
“Shit,” I swore. “I don’t know, Persephone. The damn engines just fired. By themselves. Are you sure no one’s aboard?”
“Sensors aren’t showing anything living over there except you, Langston.” There was a momentary pause. “Time to get off that boat.”
“Yeah, that’s a big roger. Heading to the airlock, now.” I panned my light across the last three rows. Nine souls lost, at least for a few months. I turned to go, but something stopped me in my tracks. Something had been different on those last bodies. I swept the flashlight back, panning it over the coils, looking for whatever had caught my attention.
One of the corpses, its pale, lifeless eyes wide open, stared back at me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.T. Nicholas is the author of the upcoming science fiction novel ReCoil (February 2020 from Titan Books) and the neo-noire science fiction series, The New Lyons Sequence (available now from Rebel Base Books).
J.T. was born in Lexington, Virginia, though within six months he moved (or was moved, rather) to Stuttgart, Germany. Thus began the long journey of the military brat, hopping from state to state and country to country until, at present, he has accumulated nearly thirty relocations. This experience taught him that, regardless of where one found oneself, people were largely the same.
When not writing, J.T. spends his time practicing a variety of martial arts, playing games (video, tabletop, and otherwise), and reading everything he can get his hands on.
J.T. currently resides in Wilmington, North Carolina with his wife, a pair of indifferent cats, and two Australian Shepherd puppies intent on destroying anything and everything that fits in their mouths.
YA Weekend: Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus
Posted on March 1, 2020 19 Comments
I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.
Mogsy’s Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Genre: Horror, Young Adult
Series: Stand Alone
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. BYR (February 25, 2020)
Length: 304 pages
Author Information: Website | Twitter
For so long, I’ve been on the lookout for a YA horror that truly terrifies me, and I think I’ve found it. That’s not to say author Daniel Kraus doesn’t make a few plays toward YA traditions in Bent Heavens, but after reading it, I certainly feel as though I’ve been through a hellish, insanity-inducing nightmare and barely made it back with my mind intact.
Our story stars Liv Fleming, whose father Lee went missing more than two years ago, shortly after he started becoming mentally unstable and claiming that he had been a victim of alien abduction. The resulting paranoia had led Lee to take his daughter and her childhood friend Doug out into the woods to set traps for the aliens, which never ended up snaring anything more interesting than the odd squirrel. Still, even with her dad gone now, Liv continues to go out with Doug to the woods each day to check on the traps, partly out of tradition and partly out of hope. Even though what Lee had claimed about his abduction seemed impossible, neither do the teens want to believe that the man, whom they had both loved and respected, had been completely out of his head.
But then one day, just when Liv was about to give up hope and take down the traps once and for all, she and Doug find a strange, monstrous-looking creature caught in one of them. With shock and horror, they realize Lee had been right, which now puts his disappearance in a whole new light. Desperate to find out what had become to her father, Liv reluctantly goes along with Doug’s plan to keep the alien a secret while they figure out how to communicate with it and force it reveal Lee’s whereabouts.
Much of this occurs in the first half of the book, where the content remains quite tame. It’s what happens later on—as the story descends into dark, uncomfortable and disturbing territory—that makes Bent Heavens such a chilling, skin-crawling read. The beauty in it, too, is that there is not just a single dimension to this terror. It’s difficult to describe without giving away too much of the plot, but I will say the reason why I thought this novel was so effective is because of the combination of graphic detail and an atmosphere of unease. Kraus doesn’t pull any punches, and many of the ideas in here are meant to make you squirm, or like you’ve just taken a sucker punch to the gut. One-part body horror, one-part psychological thriller, this novel is designed to explore the darkness of human nature and the lengths we go to justify certain choices.
Bent Heavens is a “mature” YA horror in that sense, one I would hesitate to recommend to everyone, let alone every teen, because there are moments that get too “real” for comfort despite the story’s speculative fiction undertones. So be aware, this book is not for the faint of heart, and if you do not want to read about themes related to pain, cruelty and torture, I would stay far away.
Personally speaking, though, the darkness was what I loved about this book, the bold way it was written, knowing the complex emotions it would stir up and not caring. In fact, in some ways I wish this had been a purely adult novel, so we could have dispensed with certain YA conventions such as the exaggerated, high-school-style affectations in the dialogue or over-embellished prose. Liv herself is pumped full of adolescent angst, and she’s also involved in a lot of petty school-related drama that ultimately served little purpose. Furthermore, there was a pitiful attempt to shoehorn in a romance when the story really didn’t need one. Bruno’s presence seemed entirely unnecessary, and by the end of the book you realize he was just there as a tool to further plot development. Worse was how underdeveloped his character was, and rarely do Liv’s thoughts of him go beyond ogling his good looks. There’s meaningful diversity and then there’s token representation, and unfortunately, Bruno’s shallow portrayal makes it feel like the latter.
That said, the overall storyline was solid and tightly paced, even with the aforementioned diversions and the needless hanky-panky with Bruno, because in the greater scheme of things, any flaws were just minor distractions. On the whole, Kraus did a phenomenal job tracing Liv’s evolution of thought, which serves as a reflection on the darker side of human psychology. Because of this, none of the main characters are going to feel all that sympathetic, but likely this is by design. And finally, there’s the ending, which admittedly had a twist that I saw coming, yet it was still so nauseatingly and viscerally awful and devastating that I think the intended emotional impact was still felt.
So yes, Bent Heavens is a book that will stay with me for a long time. I would recommend it—but with caveats. You’ll probably need to be in a certain frame of mind to read and appreciate it, but if a truly unsettling horror is what you’re looking for and the novel’s description piques your interest, I would give it a try.
Bookshelf Roundup 02/29/20: Stacking the Shelves & Recent Reads
Posted on February 29, 2020 28 Comments
Bookshelf Roundup is a feature I do every weekend which fills the role of several blog memes, like Stacking the Shelves where I talk about the new books I’ve added to my library or received for review, as well as It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? where I summarize what I’ve finished reading in the last week and what I’m planning to read soon. Mostly it also serves as a recap post, so sometimes I’ll throw in stuff like reading challenge progress reports, book lists, and other random bookish thoughts or announcements.
Received for Review
My thanks to the publishers and authors for the following review copies received, and be sure to click the links to their Goodreads pages for more details and full descriptions!
First, a big thank you to the amazing team at Ace/Roc/DAW for sending along a care package earlier this week, containing the following finished copies: False Value by Ben Aaronovitch is the eighth installment of the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series, which I love — not surprisingly, I’ve already devoured this one and a review should be hitting the blog some time next week. Another one I’ll be starting soon is Smoke Bitten by Patricia Briggs, and it’s hard to believe we’re on book number twelve in the Mercy Thompson series, but I’ll keep reading as long as they keep coming. Up next are finished copies of Sword of Fire by Katharine Kerr and The Queen’s Bargain by Anne Bishop, both of which are continuations to an already established series, reintroducing readers to their respective worlds. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get to them next month.
Thank you also to Aladdin, a children’s imprint of Simon & Schuster, for this surprise arrival of City Spies by James Ponti. It’s a middle grade novel about a group of spy kids, and while I might not be its target audience, I think I’ll be passing this one on to my daughter who reads above her grade level and should probably be ready for this now. Thanks also to Del Rey for sending along this ARC of Queen of the Unwanted by Jenna Glass. It wasn’t on my radar before, even though it sounded familiar, and only when I looked it up did I realize it is the sequel to The Women’s War. I haven’t read the first book yet, hence I haven’t been following up with news on the series, but it’s definitely on the to-read list. Up next, with thanks to 47North and Wunderkind PR for a finished copy of The Killing Fog by Jeff Wheeler, which I’m actually going to try really hard to fit into my spring schedule because this looks quite interesting! And finally, with thanks to Tor Books and Tor.com for ARCs of Automatic Reload by Ferrett Steinmetz and The Ghosts of Sherwood by Carrie Vaughn, respectively. Both are highly anticipated releases on my May-June TBR!
I’ve been trying real hard these last couple weeks to limit my digital haul, since at the moment I have a lot of audiobooks to catch up with, plus I also want to boost my NetGalley stats by a few points before I start requesting again. Still, there was one title I couldn’t resist grabbing, and that’s The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, with thanks to Random House Audio.
Interviews and Guest Posts
“It’s All About Family…And Thrillers” by T. Frohock
Reviews
The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood (3.5 of 5 stars)
The Will and the Wilds by Charlie N. Holmberg (3.5 of 5 stars)
The Chill by Scott Carson (2.5 of 5 stars)
This Week’s Reads
Have you heard of or read any of the books featured this week? What caught your eye? Any new discoveries? I hope you found something interesting for a future read! Let me know what you plan on checking out. Until next time, see you next Roundup!
Friday Face-Off: Ring
Posted on February 28, 2020 12 Comments
Welcome to The Friday Face-Off, a weekly meme created by Books by Proxy! Each Friday, we will pit cover against cover while also taking the opportunity to showcase gorgeous artwork and feature some of our favorite book covers. If you want to join the fun, simply choose a book each Friday that fits that week’s predetermined theme, post and compare two or more different covers available for that book, then name your favorite. A list of future weeks’ themes are available at Lynn’s Book Blog.
This week’s theme is:
“One Ring to rule them all”
~ a cover featuring a RING
Mogsy’s Pick:
Best Day Ever by Kaira Rouda
I had a feeling I would find a ring among covers of the domestic thrillers I’ve read, and I was right. Best Day Ever is a look into the lives of a seemly perfect couple, Paul Strom and his wife Mia. Married ten years, the two of them are raising two boys in a wealthy neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, and they’ve also recently bought a cottage on the beautiful shores of Lake Erie.
To anyone looking in from the outside, the Stroms have the best life and the best marriage. And they’re also about to have themselves the best day ever, planning for a romantic weekend away at their lakeside cottage, just the two of them without the kids. Hitting the road bright and early, the two of them are determined to make the most of their weekend, but tempers erupt almost immediately as they start to discuss the recent issues in their relationship. The perfect couple might not be so perfect after all, as dark secrets about their life begin to come to the surface.
Let’s take a look at the covers:
From left to right:
Graydon House (2017) – Graydon House Paperback (2018)
HQ (2017) – HQ Australia (2018) – Wheeler Large Print (2017)
Czech Edition (2018) – German Edition (2018) – Hungarian Edition (2018)
Winner:
And first place goes to the German edition! I thought it had the prettiest cover this week, and I wasn’t really bowled over by any of the others.
But what do you think? Which one is your favorite?
Audiobook Review: The Chill by Scott Carson
Posted on February 27, 2020 16 Comments
I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.</small
Mogsy’s Rating (Overall): 2.5 of 5 stars
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Series: Stand Alone
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (February 11, 2020)
Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Narrator: John Bedford Lloyd
Nestled in the forests of northern New York situated in the Catskills is the small town of Chilewaukee and the calm, quiet waters of their reservoir nicknamed the Chill, which supplies water for millions of people living in the southern part of the state. Beneath its mirror-smooth surface though, lies a terrible history of violence and death. Evidence of that past can still be found in the ruins of Galesburg, lying flooded at the bottom of those clear waters, the final remnants of a town that didn’t go down without a fight. Nearly 80 years have passed since officials came up from the city and tried to force the townspeople out, prompting a fierce rebellion, but in the end, their efforts were all for naught. The Chilewaukee dam and reservoir were still constructed “for the greater good”, and Galesburg was drowned.
Now though, the once proud dam sports cracks and leaks, a result of decades of negligence and oversight. Enter Mick Fleming, chief engineer of the state’s water infrastructure, whose grandfather was also the architect behind the Chilewaukee dam. But while in town doing inspections, Mick spies a strange man lurking around in the woods, claiming to be a freelance journalist and photographer. Meanwhile, Chilewaukee’s sheriff Steve Ellsworth has his hands full with his son Aaron, a young man who hasn’t been quite the same since his mother died. Bounced out of the Coast Guard’s rigorous rescue swimming program for letting his temper get to him, Aaron returned to his hometown and immediately fell in with the wrong crowd, getting into drugs and drinking. Steve wishes very badly for Aaron to turn his life around, but when the day finally comes, it is not in the way the sheriff wanted or even dreamed could happen. The terrible incident brings officer Gillian Mathers of the Department of Environmental Protection Police to Chilewaukee, where she expected to deal with an accidental murder, but instead is faced with something far weirder. With ties to the drowned village of Galesburg herself, Gillian listens to Aaron’s wild, impossible report of what happened, while hiding the fact she knows more than she lets on.
This is the initial set up for the premise of The Chill, by thriller author Michael Koryta writing under the pseudonym Scott Carson. It had the potential for so much mystery, horror, and drama, and for the first half of the book, at least, the story delivered all that and more. At a certain point though, the storytelling takes a sharp nosedive, and the following are the reasons why I think this happened. One, as it sometimes happens with even the most experienced of authors, Carson decided to get a little too enthusiastic with sharing of information about the logistics and architectural challenges of building a damn dam. Yes, I get it—while doing prep work for their books, authors no doubt come across fascinating tidbits in their research all the time. Doesn’t mean the readers always want to hear about them though. It makes for dry reading, and here, it resulted in too many sections where pacing dragged, and the halted momentum caused the rest of the novel’s strengths to crumble along with its chances of being a great book.
Character development appeared to be an early casualty, as I thought another reason for the lackluster second half was absence of genuinely interesting personalities. The character I enjoyed reading about most also happened to be the most flawed, and that was Aaron, an angry and troubled young man whom I admittedly wanted to throttle from the first moment he showed up on the page. However, the first half saw him making great strides, though ultimately that progress was completely obliterated by the meandering narrative and overly complex dam history and mythology which followed. By the end of the book, there were few characters I connected with enough to care whether they made it out alive or not.
And finally, the heady atmosphere of eeriness and mystery present in the beginning was pretty much all gone by the halfway point. I’ve seen The Chill being compared to Stephen King, who apparently even provided a blurb and recommended it on social media, and in many respects I can even understand why some folks would draw similarities, especially in the novel’s supernatural elements. What it lacked, however, was the keen sense of dread that King does so well, the way he can maintain a high level of suspense so that even when the reader know exactly what’s coming, you’re kept on the edge of your seat. When the inevitable finally does come in The Chill though, there was no surprise or horror, just a sense of detachment as I watched the disaster play out with bored apathy.
Even the audiobook narrator couldn’t really save this one for me, even though John Bedford Lloyd is a great reader who has done a few other thrillers I enjoyed. His performance in The Chill was solid, but because of the way this novel was structured, I think it could have used multiple narrators which would have made the experience more immersive.
Overall, this was a book that had an amazing concept and lots of potential. Sadly, after a promising first half, things rapidly unraveled and in the end I was left feeling cold—not chilled to the bone like I had wanted, but filled with disappointment and indifference.
Waiting on Wednesday 2/26/20
Posted on February 26, 2020 12 Comments
“Waiting On Wednesday” is a weekly meme that first originated at Breaking the Spine but has since linked up with “Can’t Wait Wednesday” at Wishful Endings now that the original creator is unable to host it anymore. Either way, this fun feature is a chance to showcase the upcoming releases that we can’t wait to get our hands on!
Mogsy’s Pick
Bone Chase by Weston Ochse (December 1, 2020 by Gallery/Saga Press)
This book landed on my radar earlier in the week when I caught a glimpse of the cover, and when I leaned in to take a closer look, I was like, Does that skeletal hand have six fingers? Anyway, the publisher is sure putting out a lot of good stuff at the end of this year, and I’m definitely on board with a thriller!
“In true The Da Vinci Code fashion, a taut thriller filled with rival factions vying for control of the truth in a giant global conspiracy.
There were giants on the earth in those days—at least that’s what the Bible says. But, where are they? Did they ever really exist at all?
When out-of-work math teacher Ethan McCloud is sent a mysterious box, he and his ex-girlfriend begin to unravel a mystery 10,000 years in the making—and he is the last hope to discovering the world’s greatest conspiracy. Chased by both the Six-Fingered Man and the Council of David, Ethan must survive the chase—and find the truth.”
Guest Post: “It’s All About Family…And Thrillers” by T. Frohock
Posted on February 25, 2020 10 Comments
Today, we’re thrilled to welcome back author T. Frohock to the BiblioSanctum! We’ve been followers of her work for a long time, and celebrations are in order for the release of her new book Carved From Stone and Dream, the follow-up to Where Oblivion Lives in the hit series Los Nifilim! Set during the Spanish Civil War, the story opens in the year 1939 and Catalonia has fallen. When a coded notebook belonging to a Los Nifilim undercover operative falls into the enemy’s hands, our half-angel,half-daimon protagonist Diago must risk it all to track it down. Fans of historical fiction rich in the paranormal will want to take note of this one! In the meantime, Ms. Frohock has very kindly written us a guest post on the importance of family ties, a significant theme in the series. And hey, we love thrillers too! We hope you’ll enjoy the post, and be sure to check out Los Nifilim and its newest installment, Carved From Stone and Dream, published by Harper Voyager and hitting bookstore shelves today!
IT’S ALL ABOUT FAMILY…AND THRILLERS
by T. Frohock
In other posts that I’ve written for the BiblioSanctum, I’ve talked about the Solomon story and how it lays the groundwork for the characters of Guillermo, Diago, and Miquel. Their interactions with one another form the basis for the Los Nefilim novellas: In Midnight’s Silence, Without Light or Guide, and The Second Death.
Embedded within those novellas is the underlying theme of family, which begins when Diago finds that he has a five-year-old son, Rafael, who he had not previously known existed. In an effort to protect Rafael from his daimonic kin, his angelic mother hides him in an orphanage. When she is murdered, the child’s angelic uncle finds Diago and tells him about Rafael.
No one in this configuration ever expected Diago to take responsibility for Rafael. What they didn’t count on was the way in which Diago’s own abandonment influenced his decisions. Knowing the trauma of being rejected by his daimonic family, he vows to take care of Rafael and saves him from the daimons. Diago’s husband, Miquel, fully supports Diago’s decision and together, they learn to parent Rafael.
Of course, the novellas also involve plotlines that include: the stolen plan for a catastrophic bomb, a murder mystery, and a kidnapping/extortion ring of Nazi angels, because I like thrillers, okay?
That underlying theme of family continues in the Los Nefilim novel, Where Oblivion Lives. There, we see Diago becoming more a part of Los Nefilim—Spanish Nephilim that possess the power to harness music and light in the supernatural war between the angels and daimons—which serves as another metaphor for family. Diago and Miquel are working for Los Nefilim while learning to be good fathers to Rafael, who is six in 1932.
Meanwhile, the king of Los Nefilim, Guillermo, is struggling with his own parenting woes as he struggles to rein in his seven-year-old daughter, Ysabel. She wants to be a spy for Los Nefilim, and when her father tells her no, she decides that a real leader doesn’t wait for permission. Before it’s all over, Guillermo is forced to concede that his wife, Juanita, is right. Ysabel is ready to begin learning the family business.
There’s also a stolen violin, Nazis, past incarnations, Guillermo’s wicked brother, Jordi, and a terrible angelic presence to keep things exciting, because the thrillers-thing, you see?
This all brings us to Carved from Stone and Dream, which takes place roughly nine years after the events of Where Oblivion Lives. The guys are still tough, fighting the angelic ground wars, but they’re also fathers, and in Carved from Stone and Dream we see both Rafael and Ysabel begin to take a larger part of the story.
Guillermo, Diago, and Miquel are seasoned soldiers. They’ve learned to nurture one another in a very non-toxic relationship, and while they still have their weaknesses, they have bonded deeply through their time together. They are also beginning to see themselves reflected in the actions of their children.
Rafael is now fourteen and determined to prove that he can be a beneficial member of Los Nefilim. When his desire to monitor a suspected traitor to Los Nefilim is thwarted by Guillermo’s wife, Juanita, he rebels as only a fourteen-year-old boy can—he takes matters into his own hands. What begins as simple spy mission morphs into an adventure that throws Rafael into an adult world he isn’t physically prepared to handle.
When both Miquel and Rafael are captured by Guillermo’s brother, Jordi, Rafael uses his fathers’ guidance to inform his decisions. He interprets and applies their teachings so that he is able to navigate his captivity in his own way. He also learns that being a hero is not always about noble ideas. Sometimes, survival alone is a heroic act.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Guillermo’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Ysabel, is busy applying what she has learned to the family business. In doing so, she finds the apparent ease with which her father coordinates the movements of Los Nefilim is often fraught with self-doubt. As her angelic mother, Juanita, treats her more like an adult, Ysabel is suddenly faced with Juanita’s prejudices about the daimons. It’s a sobering moment for her, especially given that Diago, a man she loves like an uncle, is half-daimon.
There is also a stolen codebook, a covert site, Nationalists and Nazis and spies, because I’m sure you know by now … thrillers.
While I try to keep the stories exciting, I don’t want to overshadow the growth of the family units as a whole. That’s why I try to intersperse the action with quiet scenes among the families. I want to overcome that idea that once a person passes the age of thirty, their lives become static and they have nothing more to learn.
Nor do I want the story to be about teenagers saving the world. It’s about young people who learn from their experiences, often with responsible adult guidance. In order to do that, the teenagers need to have positive relationships with the adults in their lives, as well as the clear-eyed ability to see their parents as they really are.
Throughout the series, we follow Diago as he learns how to become a productive member in a world of family that is so new to him. We also see the people who are close to him. So when you look at the series as whole, it’s a little easier to see that the stories are about birth families and found families and how we form and sustain relationships within our circles of love.
I just throw in the codebooks, covert sites, daimons, angels, and Nazis, because … say it with me now … thrillers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T. Frohock has turned a love of history and dark fantasy into tales of deliciously creepy fiction. A real-life cyborg, T. has a cochlear implant, meaning she can turn you on or off with the flick of a switch. Make of that what you will. She is the author of Miserere: An Autumn Tale, the Los Nefilim omnibus, Where Oblivion Lives, and Carved from Stone and Dream. She currently lives in North Carolina, where she has long been accused of telling stories, which is a southern colloquialism for lying.
For more information, visit her website at www.tfrohock.com!
Also catch up with her at:
Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest
Review: The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood
Posted on February 24, 2020 30 Comments
I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.
The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood
Mogsy’s Rating (Overall): 3.5 of 5 stars
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Book 1 of The Serpent Gates
Publisher: Hardcover: Tor | Audiobook: Macmillan Audio (February 11, 2020)
Length: Hardcover: 464 pages | Audiobook: 18 hrs and 37 mins
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Audiobook Narrator: Avita Jay
A solid if unevenly paced fantasy epic by A.K. Larkwood, The Unspoken Name is a brilliant injection of new ideas into the genre and a stunning effort in world-building. Still, even though I enjoyed this novel very much and thought it was impressively well put together, the fact that it is a debut is apparent in almost every one of its aspects, especially in the areas of characterization and storytelling.
The Unspoken Name is the tale of an orc woman named Csorwe, following her journey from acquiescent priestess to ruthless mercenary after she turns her back on her god. As the book begins, our protagonist is a young girl sequestered within the House of Silence, destined to be an eventual sacrifice to the Unspoken One, whom her people worship. On the day she is fated to die, however, a mystery stranger named Belthandros Sethennai swoops in to her rescue, whisking her away from the temple to reveal so much more to life than the only one she’s ever known.
But of course, her savior has his own agenda. Sethennai informs Csorwe that he is a wizard in exile, cast out by his archnemesis. In order to reclaim his home, he must retrieve a legendary artifact known as the Reliquary of Pentravesse, which would bestow anyone who possessed it with extraordinary knowledge and power. To do so, he would need Csorwe’s help, thus beginning her training as a spy, thief, and killer—honed to become a wizard’s sword.
In her travels to fulfill her mission though, Csorwe discovers that her future is a lot more complicated than switching out one destiny for another, a realization made even more evident when she meets Shuthmili, a powerful mage living in her own version of captivity. As Csorwe was before, Shuthmili is bound to her duty and her handlers, prompting all hell to break lose when she escapes with our protagonist, the two of them becoming fugitives on the run. Meanwhile, Csorwe is still under pressure to find the Reliquary, especially when it turns out Sethannai’s rivals are also hunting for the powerful relic.
At its heart, The Unspoken Name features the classic fantasy quest narrative almost as old as the genre itself. But to Larkwood’s credit, her creative handling of familiar tropes makes this one an invigorating read with a lot of fresh takes. For one thing, character motivation and growth are prioritized over story structure, with emphasis on self-realization and building meaningful relationships. We also have outstanding originality in the world-building, with unlimited potential in the concept of multiple universes accessible via magical gates.
That said, the overall reading experience was somewhat undermined by the hollowness of these aspects. As in many first novels, the world-building was overburdened with too many ideas, too many fancy names and not enough substance. While some of these elements showed a great deal of imagination, few reached the point of being convincing or made me feel like they were integrated into a larger whole. Take the culture of the people, or the magical and theological systems of the world, for example. Details and descriptions were mostly surface-level and aren’t explored any further than necessary.
The novel is also divided into several sections, and the transitions are awkwardly executed with sudden time skips. I absolutely adored the intro, focusing on Csorwe’s life as a young girl at the temple and her rescue by Sethennai, but I was not made to feel as involved by the subsequent parts of her journey. This is mainly due to pacing, which is uneven and slow in places. To be fair, having read a lot of fantasy debuts, I don’t think these are issues unique to The Unspoken Name, but the book did struggle to hold my attention on and off throughout the middle sections.
Still, while this review might make it sound like the negatives outweigh the strengths, I assure you the opposite is true. Once you start reading The Unspoken Name, you’ll find that its components ultimately come together to form a compelling narrative, one worth your commitment and time. Despite the novel’s flawed execution, the overall themes in it shine through with their heartfelt messages of loyalty, friendships, and love. It’s also story of struggle and determination, of not accepting things as they are, but instead pushing to make your own choices and fulfill your own goals. That’s certainly a solid base to build a series on, which also helps the story overcome some of its weaknesses. I’ll be following A.K. Larkwood with interest to see what her next book will bring.
YA Weekend: The Will and the Wilds by Charlie N. Holmberg
Posted on February 23, 2020 16 Comments
I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.
The Will and the Wilds by Charlie N. Holmberg
Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult
Series: Stand Alone
Publisher: 47North (January 21, 2020)
Length: 268 pages
Author Information: Website | Twitter
After some thought, I finally decided to get off the fence and try The Will and the Wilds by Charlie N. Holmberg, even though I wasn’t too crazy about her last book. Now that I’ve finished reading, the good news is, I definitely prefer this one—the setting is more my alley, with its lush enchanted woods and fairy tale vibes. The characters are also more likeable, a big plus! And though I still felt there were some pacing issues, overall I enjoyed myself.
The Will and the Wilds takes place in a village by the wildwoods where the veil between the mortal and supernatural realms is said to be thinner, allowing fae-like creatures called mystings to pass through. Enna and her father live just at the edge of these forests, though she is not as bothered by this than the other townsfolk. After all, her father was one of the greatest swordsmen who has ever lived, a legendary hero who passed into the other realm, fought off monsters and stole a magical gem called the Telling Stone as his prize.
But after the death of Enna’s mother, who was murdered by mystings, her father was never the same again. His mind broken from everything he’s done and seen, he had given the Telling Stone to his only daughter as a protective charm, and Enna grew up researching and learning everything she can about mystings. The Telling Stone warns her when there are any about, and she has also surrounded their house with specially grown herbs to ward them off.
Then one night, Enna is alarmed to find a particularly nasty breed of mysting called a gobler in her home, the creatures having broken through her barriers. After barely escaping with their lives, Enna knows she and her father will need some extra protection. She ends up summoning another type of mysting called a narval, with whom she hopes to strike a bargain for some help. The narval, Maekallus, agrees to kill the gobler for Enna, but his kind also demands a special kind of payment—a kiss that can have the power to steal her soul.
So first off, I loved the world-building. Nothing too fancy, but in this case, its simplicity is also its strength. The story of The Will and the Wilds has the feel of a fairy tale, so some of its more tropey elements—an enchanted forest, a magical gemstone, a tragic and violent backstory, evil and vicious monsters, etc.—all actually work in its favor. Furthermore, Holmberg can get away with some of what I thought were the more unrealistic, questionable decisions of the main character. Everything Enna does seems very impulsive and at times almost irrational. Summon a mysting even though someone with her experience and level of knowledge should really know better? Sure, why the hell not! None of Enna’s actions really feel organic—nor do her eventual feelings for Maekallus—since the author’s heavy hand in always felt, tipping the scales and making it all happen. But because patterns or motifs of a fairy tale are predictable by nature, the fact that the characters and the plot play out exactly the way you expect is surprisingly comforting.
That said, being so uncomplicated and straightforward, the story has to find other ways to hold the reader’s attention, and there are times it really struggles. Looking back, I realized there was a lot in this book that ended up being completely unnecessary, such as Tennith, the most handsomest and swooniest boy in town that Enna sort of has a crush on. Like too many other dangling threads in this book, that one went absolutely nowhere—but then, of course, you already knew it would go nowhere, as soon as Maekallus came into the picture. In retrospect, it was a whole lot of filler, inconsequential detail which instead of making the novel stronger, actually made it feel more forgettable. The entire story could have been pared down into the size of a novella without losing anything too important, and it probably would have been more impactful.
As such, I would only recommend The Will and the Wilds if you’re looking for a light read, something airy and sweet to enjoy on a rainy afternoon, perhaps. It’s the epitome of your middle-of-the-road YA fairy tale-inspired fantasy and likely won’t end up on any of my year-end lists, but books like this definitely have a place in my reading life.
The BiblioSanctum 