Addictively readable and the snark was hilarious, but the plot hinges on a couple of worldbuilding details that broke the whole thing for me;
-At no poAddictively readable and the snark was hilarious, but the plot hinges on a couple of worldbuilding details that broke the whole thing for me;
-At no point did I understand the general public's fear/hate of empaths. Who cares if someone can read your emotions? They can't psychically manipulate them, and they can't read thoughts, so why would anyone care? Oh no, he knows I'm bored/angry/sad/excited/WHATEVER. 'It's mindrape' I'm sorry, it’s fucking WHAT??? Dear gods, calm down. They're about to pass a law banning empaths from government jobs, because 'if you know someone's emotions it's too easy to manipulate that person' come ON. What are you talking about??? Are you going to ban reading body language next?
-Much bigger deal: there are only two empaths in the whole of Seattle. I did the math; if that's reflective of how many empaths exist in the population, then there are around NINE HUNDRED in the entire USA.
NINE.
HUNDRED.
If there are 900 in the whole USA, no one is running internet ads aimed at them. No one is making board games for them. No one is making all-empath BOY-BANDS. (All come up in the book.) Most people would never meet an empath in their entire lives. We meet a server who desperately wants the right to kick empaths out of the diner where he works; sir, it will literally never come up.
All Therin had to do was invent a reason empaths avoid Seattle - meaning that 2:750,000 is NOT the normal ratio of empaths to baseline humans - and it would have been fine. (Like maybe, oh I don’t know, Seattle being the home base for the corporation that studies empaths like rats, spies on them, and researches ways to shut empathy down? I can imagine empaths wouldn't want to live there! See, I fixed it for you in SECONDS. Look how easy that was!) But 2:750,000 broke the worldbuilding SO BAD.
(Alternatively a better murder mystery wouldn't hinge on 'it has to be a person like x and there are only 2 in the city, if it's not this one it's that one', which is almost unbearably lazy, but okay.)
Other than that the writing is great. Couldn't believe a book published in 2023 wanted me to root for a romance involving a guy who writes press releases for cops (so this is the dude who spins it whenever a cop kills someone???) and I only gave Jamey a pass on being a cop because she quits...but if that doesn’t matter to you then you should be fine, I guess? The rest of the worldbuilding is legitimately fantastic and very cool. Reece is awesome and I love him. (Though I didn't understand him mocking Evan's accent when he literally told other people off for doing the same? Why so dickish, carebear empath?)
I don’t know, it’s great and awful in different ways. But it got me out of a bad reading slump, and I'm extremely grateful for that....more
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the c*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
HIGHLIGHTS ~no vows of chastity for these nuns ~supporting women’s wrongs 100% ~don’t touch someone else’s pearl (not a euphemism!) ~drown all colonisers ~brace yourself for ALL the Emotions ~a love triangle that is actually excellent ~if she lets down her hair, RUN
Saints of Storm and Sorrow grabs you by the throat and does not let you go for an instant.
It’s also a book where, to be honest, I feel like my main task is just to make sure you know about it – because once you do, it sells itself. A bisexual nun who can summon typhoons by letting down her hair is caught between the goddess she’s hiding from and the totally-not-Spaniards who’ve colonised her home? In a setting inspired by the Philippines?? What else could you possibly need to hear to convince you that Saints of Storm and Sorrow is a must-read?!?
I know, I know, sometimes we get super excited for books with amazing pitches that, in the end, are let-downs. But this is not one of those times. Saints of Storm and Sorrow is every bit as incredible as it sounds. There is no wasted potential here. If I may add a little more alliteration – Saints of Storm and Sorrow is simply superb.
Anitun Tabu herself, garbed in light, the dark moon of her face too beautiful to gaze upon, the black river of her hair a halo lashing in unseen winds. She was crowned in lightning, the spear of heaven’s judgement in her right hand.
“You called my name, Daughter?”
Lunurin is biracial, the daughter of a woman of the archipelago and a Codicían priest – but although she’s spent a good chunk of her life playing a Christian (and therefore Codicían) nun, in her heart she’s anything but. Not for lack of trying; Lunurin works hard to be soft and pleasant, both for her lover and the Church that’s given her a (kind of) sanctuary; she has kept her head down for years, playing the dutiful Christian novice. Behind closed doors, though, she has her romance with Catalina, another biracial novice, with Catalina’s younger sister filling an almost daughter-like role to round out their little family. Interestingly, despite Catalina’s Christian faith being far more genuine than Lunurin’s, Catalina seems to have no shame or complicated feelings about being queer, despite the fact that her sexuality, and her love for Lunurin, go completely against the church’s rules. But in all other respects she’s a good Codicían woman – and very clearly wants Lunurin to be one too.
Lunurin isn’t, though. And not just because she’s a stormcaller – chosen by Anitun Tabu, goddess of the sky and weather, ‘blessed’ with immense power only kept under wraps by the same powerful talisman that hides Lunurin from her goddess. Lunurin sees the hypocrisies and abuses of the Church and the Codicíans, and can’t close her eyes to them; whenever she can, she helps the poor and abused escape the Church’s reach, often with the help of Alon. In Western terms, Alon is basically a prince, the heir of the island’s ruler since his older brother was exiled; he’s also, secretly, one of the tide-touched, able to manipulate salt water with the blessing of Aman Sinaya, goddess of the sea. And he’s the only one who might be able to help when Lunurin and Catalina make a horrific discovery in the early chapters of the book – one that will lead all three of them to the breaking point, and tear them, and maybe even their island, apart.
It took everything in Lunurin not to laugh until she wept. What divine calling could there be when a primordial goddess of the heavens, with lightning for blood and storms at her beck and call, curled under Lunurin’s breastbone, whispering, “Daughter, won’t you drown them for me?”
Drawing inspiration from the Philippines, its history, and its mythology, the setting of SoSaS feels new and unique, a gorgeous and entrancing contrast to the generic Medieval-Europe-esque backdrop that is so confusingly popular in Fantasy. The world Buba has created here is beautiful and intricate, one that I fell more and more in love with the more I learned about it. The people’s relationship to the land and sea and sky, the matriarchal politics, the pearls, the hair, the wildly different (from Christianity) approach to religion, the trio of goddesses whose chosen ones are so integral to the Aynilan way of life… It’s all incredible. No detail has been missed or hand-waved or not-thought-through, with the result that it feels real enough to be a place you could visit it in person if you chose. It doesn’t feel invented, which is the highest praise I can give to a land that doesn’t exist.
For example, let’s talk about mutyas. In the (unnamed) archipelago that Lunurin lives in – clearly a fantasy version of the archipelago that is the Philippines in our world – cultures vary somewhat from island to island (we know that there are hundreds of languages spoken in the archipelago, and in the prologue, we hear of an island ruled by rajs who have tossed out the Codicíans entirely; Lunurin’s island of origin Calilan had a Datu, who was some kind of ruler; and Aynila, which is the setting of SoSaS, has the Lakan who rules the entire island alone, as best I can make out) but mutyas are one of the many things that tie everyone together. A mutya is a piece of jewellery – usually some kind of hair comb for women with magic, but for others it can take just about any form – set with the pearl the person found when they underwent their naming dive. If a person finds a special kind of pearl, it marks them as goddess-chosen – a stormcaller like Lunurin, tide-touched like Alon, or a firetender, depending on the pearl and the goddess. This is a relatively simple piece of worldbuilding, I guess, but for one thing, it’s a beautiful concept, and for a second, it’s woven throughout the entire book. Lunurin’s mutya is one of the things that helps her control (read: suppress) her magic, so it’s something she nearly always has on her person; it’s a sacred, highly personal object that every Aynilan character we come into contact with has and wears, usually openly; by the time we see someone fondle another person’s mutya uninvited, I didn’t need Buba to spell out for me how shocking and violating that was, because she’d already made sure I’d absorbed exactly how important a mutya is. Every concept Buba invents or introduces us to is like that; easy to understand and remember, shown naturally rather than info-dumped on us, and never forgotten or not-followed-through on.
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
HIGHLIGHTS ~no vows of chastity for these nuns ~supporting women’s wrongs 100% ~don’t touch someone else’s pearl (not a euphemism!) ~drown all colonisers ~brace yourself for ALL the Emotions ~a love triangle that is actually excellent ~if she lets down her hair, RUN
Saints of Storm and Sorrow grabs you by the throat and does not let you go for an instant.
It’s also a book where, to be honest, I feel like my main task is just to make sure you know about it – because once you do, it sells itself. A bisexual nun who can summon typhoons by letting down her hair is caught between the goddess she’s hiding from and the totally-not-Spaniards who’ve colonised her home? In a setting inspired by the Philippines?? What else could you possibly need to hear to convince you that Saints of Storm and Sorrow is a must-read?!?
I know, I know, sometimes we get super excited for books with amazing pitches that, in the end, are let-downs. But this is not one of those times. Saints of Storm and Sorrow is every bit as incredible as it sounds. There is no wasted potential here. If I may add a little more alliteration – Saints of Storm and Sorrow is simply superb.
Anitun Tabu herself, garbed in light, the dark moon of her face too beautiful to gaze upon, the black river of her hair a halo lashing in unseen winds. She was crowned in lightning, the spear of heaven’s judgement in her right hand.
“You called my name, Daughter?”
Lunurin is biracial, the daughter of a woman of the archipelago and a Codicían priest – but although she’s spent a good chunk of her life playing a Christian (and therefore Codicían) nun, in her heart she’s anything but. Not for lack of trying; Lunurin works hard to be soft and pleasant, both for her lover and the Church that’s given her a (kind of) sanctuary; she has kept her head down for years, playing the dutiful Christian novice. Behind closed doors, though, she has her romance with Catalina, another biracial novice, with Catalina’s younger sister filling an almost daughter-like role to round out their little family. Interestingly, despite Catalina’s Christian faith being far more genuine than Lunurin’s, Catalina seems to have no shame or complicated feelings about being queer, despite the fact that her sexuality, and her love for Lunurin, go completely against the church’s rules. But in all other respects she’s a good Codicían woman – and very clearly wants Lunurin to be one too.
Lunurin isn’t, though. And not just because she’s a stormcaller – chosen by Anitun Tabu, goddess of the sky and weather, ‘blessed’ with immense power only kept under wraps by the same powerful talisman that hides Lunurin from her goddess. Lunurin sees the hypocrisies and abuses of the Church and the Codicíans, and can’t close her eyes to them; whenever she can, she helps the poor and abused escape the Church’s reach, often with the help of Alon. In Western terms, Alon is basically a prince, the heir of the island’s ruler since his older brother was exiled; he’s also, secretly, one of the tide-touched, able to manipulate salt water with the blessing of Aman Sinaya, goddess of the sea. And he’s the only one who might be able to help when Lunurin and Catalina make a horrific discovery in the early chapters of the book – one that will lead all three of them to the breaking point, and tear them, and maybe even their island, apart.
It took everything in Lunurin not to laugh until she wept. What divine calling could there be when a primordial goddess of the heavens, with lightning for blood and storms at her beck and call, curled under Lunurin’s breastbone, whispering, “Daughter, won’t you drown them for me?”
Drawing inspiration from the Philippines, its history, and its mythology, the setting of SoSaS feels new and unique, a gorgeous and entrancing contrast to the generic Medieval-Europe-esque backdrop that is so confusingly popular in Fantasy. The world Buba has created here is beautiful and intricate, one that I fell more and more in love with the more I learned about it. The people’s relationship to the land and sea and sky, the matriarchal politics, the pearls, the hair, the wildly different (from Christianity) approach to religion, the trio of goddesses whose chosen ones are so integral to the Aynilan way of life… It’s all incredible. No detail has been missed or hand-waved or not-thought-through, with the result that it feels real enough to be a place you could visit it in person if you chose. It doesn’t feel invented, which is the highest praise I can give to a land that doesn’t exist.
For example, let’s talk about mutyas. In the (unnamed) archipelago that Lunurin lives in – clearly a fantasy version of the archipelago that is the Philippines in our world – cultures vary somewhat from island to island (we know that there are hundreds of languages spoken in the archipelago, and in the prologue, we hear of an island ruled by rajs who have tossed out the Codicíans entirely; Lunurin’s island of origin Calilan had a Datu, who was some kind of ruler; and Aynila, which is the setting of SoSaS, has the Lakan who rules the entire island alone, as best I can make out) but mutyas are one of the many things that tie everyone together. A mutya is a piece of jewellery – usually some kind of hair comb for women with magic, but for others it can take just about any form – set with the pearl the person found when they underwent their naming dive. If a person finds a special kind of pearl, it marks them as goddess-chosen – a stormcaller like Lunurin, tide-touched like Alon, or a firetender, depending on the pearl and the goddess. This is a relatively simple piece of worldbuilding, I guess, but for one thing, it’s a beautiful concept, and for a second, it’s woven throughout the entire book. Lunurin’s mutya is one of the things that helps her control (read: suppress) her magic, so it’s something she nearly always has on her person; it’s a sacred, highly personal object that every Aynilan character we come into contact with has and wears, usually openly; by the time we see someone fondle another person’s mutya uninvited, I didn’t need Buba to spell out for me how shocking and violating that was, because she’d already made sure I’d absorbed exactly how important a mutya is. Every concept Buba invents or introduces us to is like that; easy to understand and remember, shown naturally rather than info-dumped on us, and never forgotten or not-followed-through on.
*I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my r*I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
I was intrigued by the very weird premise, and City of Dancing Gargoyles definitely delivered on the weird!
Something Happened in the 22nd century, and now the North American continent is full of surreal, bizarre, and sometimes creepy Stuff, the vast majority of which is, thankfully, tied to specific locales. These areas are called Cities even when they’re more like towns or villages, size-wise. Are there any normal places left? Honestly, it doesn’t seem like it, but because the book is focused on the Cities, it’s possible there are normal areas that we just don’t see in Dancing.
Dancing is made up of alternating PoVs and storylines, which eventually intersect. E and M are sentient gargoyles, who strike out looking for a new home when their current one runs out of water (which they need to survive); Dolores is a teenager travelling with her spear-wielding mom looking for a safe place to live; and Meena and Joseph are travelling researchers, writing up reports on the different Cities they visit.
This isn’t a very plot-heavy book; it’s a lot of weirdness for the sake of weirdness, vibes, and an attempt at an Actual Plot stuffed in very unsatisfyingly at the last minute. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun; I just think it’s a good idea not to go in expecting plot, or a traditional story-structure. The reports on the Cities can almost be treated like flash fiction or short stories, and although I didn’t find every City interesting – especially in the second half of the book it felt like Campbell was running out of ideas – they were still…amusing? A nice break from the other PoVs? I looked forward to them.
Some of the Cities were disturbing or even stomach-churning, but a) I’m a wimp, and b) it was clearly deliberate on Campbell’s part. There’s the City of Glaring Chocolates, where the chocolates have Opinions on the fact that they’re made only to be consumed; the City of Bleeding Books, which is exactly what it sounds like; and the City of Cringing Blankets, where blankets react to human shame. Some were pretty ridiculous, like the City of Gun-Toting Trees, and some didn’t go into NEARLY enough detail, like the City of Feasting Banshees, which is a one-page poem instead of a mini-short story like most of the other reports.
But some were amazing; the City of Failing Knives, which has extremely unique marriage customs; the City of Sailing Statues, where what statue sails to shore determines what kind of year the City will have; and the City of Bingeing Bats, where the humans have finally beaten a retreat. And plenty of the others!
The book did kind of fail when it attempted plot: Joseph starts going off the rails, but how or why, and how it’s resolved, either wasn’t explained or made no sense at all; and the gargoyles start Doing A Thing that comes out of nowhere and is ‘solved’ in about two seconds. There’s quite a few things that some characters know that others don’t, which is one of the reasons I think this might be the start of a series – Rose needs to find out what M did at some point, right? And some kind of eldritch being talked to Meena in a way that DEFINITELY implied there would be more stories in this setting. It works as a standalone if you let it, but not perfectly.
If you’d like a shot of weirdness, check this out, but if you need things to make sense, I’d recommend skipping this one....more
By the Blood of Rowans was eerie and lovely and fairly dark, and wow I wanted to push most of the characters off a cliff (not the MCs, who are sweetheBy the Blood of Rowans was eerie and lovely and fairly dark, and wow I wanted to push most of the characters off a cliff (not the MCs, who are sweethearts, but…pretty much everybody else). For a murder-mystery it wasn’t very investigative, which I appreciated because murder mysteries are not actually my thing; instead it’s quite…introspective might be the word? It felt slow and quiet, even though it’s packed full of so many different flavours of hate. I did think a few things came together a bit too neatly, but the twist-reveal of the motive for the murders was excellent, and I really did like the relationship between Ash and Rowan.
Ash’s sperm-donor still needs to be pushed off a cliff, though.
It’s more than enough to make me extremely excited for Rooyen’s upcoming Finnish magic school book, My Name Is Magic, which I literally cannot wait for. !!!
Merged review:
By the Blood of Rowans was eerie and lovely and fairly dark, and wow I wanted to push most of the characters off a cliff (not the MCs, who are sweethearts, but…pretty much everybody else). For a murder-mystery it wasn’t very investigative, which I appreciated because murder mysteries are not actually my thing; instead it’s quite…introspective might be the word? It felt slow and quiet, even though it’s packed full of so many different flavours of hate. I did think a few things came together a bit too neatly, but the twist-reveal of the motive for the murders was excellent, and I really did like the relationship between Ash and Rowan.
Ash’s sperm-donor still needs to be pushed off a cliff, though.
It’s more than enough to make me extremely excited for Rooyen’s upcoming Finnish magic school book, My Name Is Magic, which I literally cannot wait for. !!!...more
*I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my revi*I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
HIGHLIGHTS ~roads of running water…in the sky! ~very mysterious sentencing guidelines ~remember to wash your fingers
I don’t think it would be completely inaccurate to call Talio’s Codex something of a procedural drama set in a (low-magic) fantasy setting; we’re following the titular Talio as he rejoins the legal sphere after a decade away (and a serious disgrace). There is a case, then some more cases, and the forming of a small law firm; Talio and his business partner are also invited to join a committee that makes recommendations for potential new laws. But it seemed to me that the vast majority of the page-time went to Talio’s developing or renewed relationships, which is why I’d call it more drama than procedural. I found that disappointing, but it’s not an objectively good or bad thing, just a matter of personal taste. Other readers will probably be grateful not to be completely drowned in legal minutiae!
Alas, that’s kind of what I was here for – I wanted meticulous, detailed worldbuilding, and I very much wanted to see what another world’s legal system might look like. But the worldbuilding (with a few exceptions) is simplistic almost to the point of insult, and the only difference between the Western justice system and Talio’s is that Talio’s is too new – and too pre-Industrial – to have all the laws we do. (See the sub-plot wherein this society is only just starting to see the need for copyright and patents.)
Let’s start with the world: a queen – who seems to be the latest in a line of queens – rules over four cities. Each city is known for a different attribute; people from this city are more compassionate, from this city colder and more closed-off, etc. They are linked by the skyways, magical rivers in the sky along which special ships can sail (more or less). In fact, this society has a lot of water around, because they worship a water goddess who requires ritual handwashing when entering and leaving most buildings or private residences. There used to be mages, but what exactly the mages were or did is unclear; at some point, they all went mad or bad or something and were locked out of society by a magical barrier. This period of history was overseen by someone called, I kid you not, the Sleepy Queen.
This epithet is never explained.
Enter the Incarnites; a fringe religion that instead worships a fire god. Their very existence makes most people uneasy at best, not least because Incarnites cover their entire bodies with orange robes, meaning you can never see an Incarnite, or tell them apart. Incarnites aren’t quite persecuted, but they’re definitely oppressed and discriminated against in every way, every chance non-Incarnites get.
This discrimination is one of the biggest themes/focuses of the book, but I still don’t know what Incarnites actually believe, except that they can’t be romantically or sexually involved with non-Incarnites. I have no idea what the central tenets of their faith are, and I really don’t know how they practice, either, aside from wearing the robes. Vespers is involved, but what that term means in this setting is not explained; does that mean sessions of group prayer? No clue.
So worldbuilding wise, this didn’t please me.
How about characters? Talio…did not appeal to me in the beginning, and I liked him less and less as the book went on. I got so tired of him obsessing over the looks of every vaguely pretty man he saw, and I found it unbelievable how he only started asking questions about the system he lived in NOW, not ten years ago when he was ruined because he…lost a book. Specifically, his copy of the laws and punishments of the legal system he worked in. (This is also never really explained: even Talio questions WHY losing the book was such a big deal, eventually, and we never get an answer. Why does it matter? Okay, there’s a Big Secret in the books, kiiiiind of. But nobody knows that, so why does everyone shun him for risking its exposure? Insert shrug here.) He’s not a terrible person, and he even undergoes some growth, but absolutely nothing about him held my interest. That, combined with my not liking him as a person – he can’t wrap his head around nonbinary people, and he tricks Pazli into sleeping with him – didn’t make for a great reading experience.
‘The man of his dreams’, aka Pazli, was interesting but annoying. He was so prickly, and while yes, sometimes Talio really was being insulting without realising it…most of the time Pazli was snapping at genuine good-faith efforts to connect. We get it, you hate everyone who’s not an Incarnite! Enough already! Like Talio, he learns and evolves some over the course of the book, and honestly, it probably would have been a more interesting book if it had been written from HIS perspective – what with the tug-of-war he was going through between his religion and his desire for Talio, and his trying to make a space for himself within the legal system – the first Incarnite to ever do so.
The Big Conspiracy was a letdown, particularly in how it was handled handled – (view spoiler)[I would have been happier if the ‘experiment’ didn’t have a clear ‘winner’ and don’t really love what Cohen was implying re harsher punishments to broken laws being the answer (hide spoiler)] – it was all so obvious, and then THE MOST DRAMATIC climax ever, and I just could not.
Writing like this certainly didn’t help;
As he pulled out, it was as if he were taking Talio’s guts with him.
…If, after anal sex, it feels like your guts are being ripped out, that’s – not a good thing??? That sounds agonising, but in context it’s not meant to be, so – what???
Talio felt the end of the judicial season approaching like the spring thaw; they were running out of time.
The end of the judicial season is something Talio is dreading, but the spring thaw is generally considered something to look forward to, so what am I supposed to take away from this?
And please do not even get me STARTED on how all the magistrates and so on ‘rap their fingers’ on their tables and desks – not their knuckles, not gavels, their FINGERS. Which I can only assume means they’re…tapping their fingertips on the table??? With feeling??? But even so, using your fingers instead of your knuckles is going to make almost no sound, certainly not enough to quiet an excited courtroom. This was not a one-off; that phrase, rap/rapped/rapping their fingers, was used CONSTANTLY. It made no sense, I don’t know what Cohen was thinking, and I can’t believe none of the beta-readers brought it up. ???
All in all, this was a chore to read. Potentially interesting for anyone who likes stories about oppressed minorities in fantasy settings, I guess? But a fantastical legal thriller this is not, and I wasn’t impressed with what it is....more
*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the c*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*
House of Frank bills itself as a cosy queer fantasy featuring found family, which – yes please! And if you made a list of all this book promises, it sounds like a truly wonderful list: a ‘knit-cardiganed mythical beast named Frank’, a piece of a fallen star, bickering cherubs, a magical arboretum – wonderful! Delightful! Surely this is going to become my new favourite thing!
Reader, it did not become my new favourite thing.
I am always immediately disappointed when I open a book I was anticipating and find that it’s written in first-person. Sometimes first-person is excellent, and the exact right way to tell a particular story, but as a rule of thumb, I don’t love it. So yeah, small disappointed ‘oh’ when I read the opening page. But some of my faves are first-person! First-person can be great!
Except that it very quickly became obvious that this was not one of those times where first-person is Excellent And Also Correct. In fact, maybe it wasn’t first-person at all – maybe it was second-person? Because Saika, our main character and narrator, talks to ‘you’, aka her dead sister Fiona – so is this first- or second-person? It was muddled and unclear and, again, second-person is freaking epic when it works – just look at Harrow the Ninth – but this didn’t work. This couldn’t decide or settle on what it wanted to be, even.
And even if it had been able to pick one and be solidly first- or second-person, the actual writing is horrendous. The prose is awkward, clunky, and Synclaire evidently one of those writers who disdains the word ‘said’, since a garbage can’s worth of eye-rolling dialogue tags are squeezed into the stupidest of places. I couldn’t believe how bad the actual dialogue was – you know when something in you cringes because real people just don’t talk like that? That. All of that. Robotic, unnatural, the speech patterns just perfectly bizarre.
Info-dumps galore, and the various ‘whimsical’ characters who are to make up Saika’s found family are upended over the reader until you’re buried in them; the introductions come too fast, and what’s meant to be cute and/or funny falls flat on its face instead. Whimsy is a hard thing to pull off, and House of Frank doesn’t manage it; superficially, most of the cast seem like they’ve been pulled from a nursery school’s picture books, but there’s nothing appealing or endearing about any of them – not that any of them are granted much in the way of personality. One or two personality traits and a distinctive ‘look’, as if they were designed for a bad cartoon where their being visually distinctive matters much more than them being people. And as other early reviews have noted, the ‘found family’ element is a hard Fail: these characters aren’t loving and supportive of each other, they’re casually toxic and awful. None of them have ever tried to find the ‘mute ghost’ a way to communicate? Not even by giving them a notebook and pencil or something? (Other reviewers have suggested gloves and sign language, which I think would have been excellent – alas that we didn’t get that.) No one notices or cares that Frank’s memory is clearly Not Okay? (That Frank is having memory problems is obvious in the first chapter.) I don’t know what it is, but these characters aren’t even decent friends to each other, never mind found family.
Also, hi, why did you stick cherubs in here? Don’t put angels or demons in your story unless you’re going to tell me if or how their existence implies the existence of the Christian Heaven and god and whatnot. Just randomly sticking them in because you think they’re cute is seriously annoying. If you wanted cute grumpy creatures, fauns are RIGHT THERE.
This is without even BEGINNING to dig into why Saika feels like turning her sister’s ashes into a tree is somehow Wrong, despite it being Fiona’s clear wish and request. That it takes Saika two years to start the process isn’t strange – I’m sure many people take far longer to ‘do something’ with a loved one’s ashes – but how is the arboretum process weird or wrong or whatever? What is it about the tree thing that strikes her as semi-creepy?
Also, Death. Who is most definitely not Terry Pratchett’s Death. Ffs.
(I don’t mean to imply that Pratchett’s Death is the only good example of Death, or the only way to write a personification of death. I mean that Synclaire’s Death is terrible, inexplicably sadistic – in a book that’s supposed to be about healing from grief! – while, much like the cherubs, raising enormous questions simply by EXISTING re the worldbuilding. Questions that inevitably go unanswered.)
But the worst part of this book is the writing. House of Frank is not at all what it claims to be – it’s not cosy, it’s not sweet, it’s just a lot of meh and normalised toxicity – but the actual arranging-words-into-sentences part is objectively the weakest of the book’s many weaknesses. On a technical level, House of Frank reads like a first draft, or maybe a nanonovel (which I guess is functionally the same thing), and I kind of can’t believe it’s being published as-is. It’s just bad.
House of Frank (along with three other books) is meant to be the start of Bindery Books’ catalogue; this is one of the books they’ve decided to burst out of the gate with. If this is how they choose to launch and establish themselves, I don’t hold much confidence that I’m going to like what I see from them in the future....more
Gorier than I prefer, but great! If you can handle the cannibalism (which we never quite see on-page, thank fuck) then there's a lot here for fans of Gorier than I prefer, but great! If you can handle the cannibalism (which we never quite see on-page, thank fuck) then there's a lot here for fans of magical creatures, heists-as-intrigue, and a murderous Walt Disney.
(Parts are very dark though- murder, torture, kidnapping, and as-mentioned, barely offscreen cannibalism galore. Plus whatever the hells you call all that with the golems. Clone farming for cannibalism??? And the whole thing with the hounds, urgh. It's not light and fluffy fun-times, is what I'm saying. You should definitely know that going in!)...more
Well THAT was a freaking masterpiece. So worth waiting for!
Rtc!
I received this book for free from the author via BookSirens in exchange for an honest Well THAT was a freaking masterpiece. So worth waiting for!
Rtc!
I received this book for free from the author via BookSirens in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
HIGHLIGHTS ~finally, flying cars! ~fire powers are more socially acceptable than empathy ~sending flowers is a rich asshole move ~watches that keep secrets as well as time ~never underestimate a paranoid journalist
There are some books that need to be self-published, because traditional publishing just wouldn’t know what to do with them; Nora Sakavic’s All For the Game series, pretty much everything by Andrea K Höst, The Creature Court trilogy by Tansy Rayner Roberts – I could go on. (And on, and on.) Books that are boundary-pushing, that can’t be neatly pigeon-holed, that are so wildly original or subversive or strange – or all three! – that they terrify publicity and marketing teams.
Earthflown is the newest addition to that illustrious company.
That being said, it’s not exactly what it claims to be on the tin. A Potable Study of Love and Collusion implies a lot more focus on economic inequality and a (the?) water crisis than we actually got. Although Earthflown is ostensibly about the behind-doors-backstabbing of the Arden family working to keep their exclusive control of Britain’s potable water, that part of the story is very much in the backseat. I found it very hard to keep track of the politics involved and wasn’t always clear on who was voting for what – I think there were several parliamentary votes about the water issue? but maybe also some other stuff? – or really, what the stakes were for the Ardens: they currently produce and control CM15, which makes water potable, but there’s a push to move the country to a new water-cleansing technology, and sometimes they seemed to be trying to block that, while at others hinting that they wanted the contract for building and installing the new tech? All of which is tied up with the polite feud they have with another branch of the family tree? But most of that was all in the background, which made it difficult to be emotionally invested in (or keep track of).
But that doesn’t matter in the slightest, because where Earthflown shines is in its beautifully flawed, grey-shaded characters and their interactions with each other, the way their lives intersected and overlapped. The story circles around Javier – an Arden – and Ethan, who, in a world where superpowers exist, is a priceless healer; around them are Rina, Javier’s firebending twin who is toxic at best and abusive at worst; Vegas, Ethan’s best friend and roommate; Oliver, Vegas’ on-again, off-again boyfriend and intrepid gumshoe journalist; and far off to the sidelines, poor Nick, a detective constantly dragging Oliver out of trouble by the scruff of his neck and currently under the impression he and Ethan are in a relationship. This misapprehension is entirely Ethan’s fault, and one of several ways in which we’re made very clear on the fact that Ethan is not exactly a perfect person. He can, in fact, be a bit of a dick. Though he cares very much about Vegas – their dynamic is almost sibling-like – he’s not great at remembering to care about other people as people.
So it’s kind of ironic, and definitely hilarious, that he falls very hard for an empath, aka Javier, who has spent his life keeping his superpower a secret. His immediate family know, and one or two family friends, but in a world with a lot of paranoia over and prejudice towards empaths, you can’t really blame him for keeping it on the down-low.
The surprise is that he’s also a sweetheart, which feels a bit like a miracle given a) his family as a whole and b) the awful, and awfully normalised, way his twin treats him. Seriously, it’s enough to make your skin crawl.
Corinna had been looking forward to this murder for weeks – she wasn’t there for the last one.
ENOUGH SAID.
Wren’s storytelling is a perfect balance of emotion and action, the prose smooth and incredibly moreish; before you can blink, you’re sucked in, and it’s an absolutely delicious ride. I couldn’t put Earthflown down for the two days it took me to devour it whole; I’m stunned and delighted by how well Wren keeps things moving while simultaneously doling out a whole heap of Feels and giggles. This isn’t a light-hearted book, but prepare yourself for giggle-snorts nonetheless, because there’s a bright thread of comedic moments woven through the cli fi-thriller-noir thing Wren has going on.
Um, I loved this??? Addictive as a popcorn read, but with TEETH, my gods. Some really cool worldbuilding - and I was so impressed with the way it openUm, I loved this??? Addictive as a popcorn read, but with TEETH, my gods. Some really cool worldbuilding - and I was so impressed with the way it opened with excerpts from in-universe texts. I don't think I've ever seen that done so well - one page of fictional quotes and I had all the context I needed to hit the ground running in this world that’s very like ours, but where vampyres are a protected (and endangered) species with their own culture (AND LANGUAGE - be still my nerdy heart!!!)
Add a 50yo sapphic detective who is SO OVER this small-town bs, a really delicious blurring of in-world lore and myth - are all the facts really facts? are all the superstitions just superstitions? - and you have a recipe for a book I COULD NOT put down!
(Be aware that there's some very messed-up stuff in here that could be triggering, including but not limited to hate-speech, references to the rape and torture of vampyres who look like young children, and human scum who think it's fine to mount the heads of actual vampyre kids on their walls.) ...more
Genuinely excellent, with moments of gorgeous, dark brilliance. I read the whole thing in one setting, it's that addictive and immersive!
Only thing keGenuinely excellent, with moments of gorgeous, dark brilliance. I read the whole thing in one setting, it's that addictive and immersive!
Only thing keeping it from five stars is the ending, which is not a *bad* ending - some readers will approve immensely - but I found it too predictable, especially after a book that had so many great twists before that!
Also, the editor needs to be paying more attention; there were a lot of 'week' instead of 'weak' type typos that were pretty annoying.
But the actual writing itself? Epic. Skelter is going on my list of authors to watch!...more
Deeply fucking upsetting. Can't rate it because I can't be objective. Really, really, REALLY wish I hadn't read this.
If you do go ahead and read it, bDeeply fucking upsetting. Can't rate it because I can't be objective. Really, really, REALLY wish I hadn't read this.
If you do go ahead and read it, be warned that there is really sick tentacle-and-demonic stuff happening to children, a lot of which is also explicitly sexual....more
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