Category: Fiction

Greenmantle by Charles de Lint

Greenmantle by Charles de Lint

In Greenmantle, author Charles de Lint mixes fantasy and the mob and creates something new.

Invisible in the shadows of the side of his house, a small figure stirred. A smile touched her fox-thin features.” pg 67

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Ali and her mother, Frankie, recently won the lottery and used the money to move to a house out in the country. Their neighbor, Tony, has a checkered past and has moved out to the country for reasons of his own.

Together, they’ll explore a mysterious force in the woods that is connected to haunting music as well as face threats from a far more earthly menace.

I enjoyed Greenmantle quite a lot.

“Where it passed sleepers, dreams were suddenly filled with resonances never sensed before, while those who were awake, paused in their conversations for that one moment it took for the stag to go by, resuming them again then, knowing they weren’t quite the same, but not knowing why.” pg 100

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The fantasy portions of the story were my favorite. Lint writes them well- making the fantastical seem as if it is actually possible.

Easy to see why he was one of the first writers of the modern urban fantasy genre.

Highly recommended for fantasy readers. Thanks for reading!

Moonheart by Charles de Lint

Moonheart by Charles de Lint

That was what Sara liked best about Tamson House: that it didn’t seem to be a part of the world outside its walls. Stepping over its threshold was like stepping into a place where everything you knew had to be forgotten to make way for new rules.” pg 25

Moonheart is a story about magic, myth, and how one special house connects it all.

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There are many characters in Moonheart, so many that I won’t list them here. But they are easy to keep up with in the story because they are so different.

For as old as this book is (published in 1984), I felt that it had a lot of modern urban fantasy elements to it. Charles de Lint could be considered as one of the creators of that genre.

His story goes from this world, to other worlds, and back again. I enjoyed it a lot.

“There is no such thing as chance in the workings of the world,” he replied, repeating something he’d told her the second time they’d met on the shore. pg 309

That being said, the plot drags in places. This is a book for readers with solid attention spans. I struggled a little to stay interested until the ending, which comes quickly. But once you’re in the ending, you race to finish the book- because it is that good.

Recommended for urban fantasy readers. Thanks for reading!

The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1) by R.F. Kuang

The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1) by R.F. Kuang

“Her destiny had not been written in the stars… She had made her choices fully and autonomously. pg 528 ebook

The Poppy War begins like other fantasy novels: an underprivileged young person fights her way into a school where she learns more than she ever imagined. But after that, things go in an entirely different direction with war and all of the darkness and misery that goes along with that.

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Despite friend’s reviews that this was a dark book, I didn’t expect it to go as far as it did. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a great story about human passions, shamanism, and war – it was just hard to read at times.

And it is a long book, which is great because it gives R.F. Kuang plenty of time to develop characters and flesh out her world. She does both very well.

My favorite parts of the book were Rin’s interactions with her fellow soldiers, the Cike, a group of shamans who all have different powers. Their comradery was refreshing in the midst of some very dark times.

This is not a young adult book, so librarians please classify it correctly. Highly recommended for readers who like their fantasy epic and dark.

Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3) by Martha Wells

Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3) by Martha Wells

“The good thing about pretending to be an augmented human security consultant instead of a construct SecUnit is that you can tell the humans to shut up.” pg 11, ebook

Murderbot is still on the case of GrayCris, a company it suspects is illegally mining materials from ancient alien civilizations. There are also humans who need help- as usual. Why can’t people just save themselves so our hero could get on watching its favorite entertainment vids?

“Actually, with my experience in security, anybody who wanted to hang around and live on a deteriorating terraforming facility worried me a lot more than raiders.” pg 40, ebook

Rogue Protocol though fun, didn’t live up to the quality of the first two books in this series. The plot was quite similar to the first book. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great read, but I think the first two books were better than this one.

I will be continuing on in the series, which I highly recommend for science fiction fans.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

“So then, there seems little reason why I should not undertake my motoring trip to the West Country.” pg 20, ebook

The Remains of the Day is mainly told through the memories of a butler named Stevens of Darlington Hall as he takes a short vacation to visit an old friend.

“It is sometimes said that butlers only truly exist in England.” pg 44, ebook

Throughout the story, Stevens again and again demonstrates his inability to connect with or show his emotions. But he believes this to be a positive attribute, something that he calls, “dignity.”

He gives all that he has to his position as a butler of Darlington Hall. And I was hoping his striving was worth it. In the end, the reader gets to decide if his was a life worth living or not.

Kazou Ishiguro received the Nobel Prize for this book and it is very well written. I was impressed by how Ishiguro tells the story and finds a way to connect the reader with this character who can be very unlikeable at times.

Despite some of his more infuriating attributes, I found myself cheering for Stevens anyway.

I did not like the ending of this book, which I won’t spoil for anyone. It reminded me of The Buried Giant, another well written book by Kazou Ishiguro with an ending I didn’t connect with.

This story is easier to experience than describe. If you read it, please let me know what you think about it.

Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp by Molly Tanzer

Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp by Molly Tanzer

“How Lou hated dealing with the living. The dead were so much easier to manage.” loc 256 ebook.

Lou Merriwether is a psychopomp, or someone who assists spirits from the world of the living to the world of the dead. She doesn’t get along all that well with the living, including her mother, whom Lou had a falling out with around the time that her father passed away.

But when her mother asks her to investigate a series of disappearances, Lou feels like she can’t refuse and begins an adventure across the country and into danger, more danger than she realizes.

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“She’d hoped a personal visit to the Oakland office would yield better results than her telegram to Cheyenne, but it seemed no one wanted to talk. loc 863, ebook

In addition to her personal drama, Lou has to deal with racism almost all the time as a half-Chinese, half-white person. She finds all of this easier to deal with by dressing as a man.

I loved the character of Lou- she was so feisty and willing to stick her neck out to help her friends and, sometimes, people she just met. She occasionally uses colorful language, so be warned if that sort of thing bothers you.

This world has so many curious fantasy elements to it. There are talking walruses who ferry people from one place to another. There are talking bear tribes alongside Native American tribes in the west.

The author Molly Tanzer has such a huge imagination. The world she has created is dangerous but also fun to explore.

Highly recommended for fantasy and steampunk fans. I really enjoyed this one.

A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1) by Arkady Martine

A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1) by Arkady Martine

In A Memory Called Empire, a diplomat from an out-of-the-way space station makes her way through the Teixcalaan Empire, a society which is in some ways more advanced than her own, but in other ways not.

The most interesting part of this novel was the world building. Arkady Martin has created an amazing space opera with fascinating technologies and cultures.

On the other hand, her characters didn’t appeal to me at all. I made myself finish the book, but didn’t care much about what happened to anyone.

I wasn’t surprised this book won the Hugo Award – for world building alone.

For a first novel, it is a tremendous effort and I’m certain Arkady will write more fascinating books in the future.

Perhaps I’ll give some of those other books a go. I won’t be continuing on to the other books in this series.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Nora has lived through so much and is so disappointed with reality that she doesn’t want to live anymore.

“Nora shook her head. Wishing it would fall off. Her own head. Onto the floor. So she never had to have a conversation with a stranger ever again.” pg 15, ebook

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A suicide attempt takes her to a special place filled with books that tell life stories that could have been her own – if only she had made a different choice in her current life.

“Between life and death there is a library,” she said. “And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived.” pg 29

Through living some of those lives, Nora learns about the power of choices and her own inner strength.

The Midnight Library is a beautiful book about life. I enjoyed learning and growing along with Nora.

“Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty.” pg 137 ebook

Maybe they are. And maybe we all need to remember that even the smallest choices we make matter.

Highly recommended for fantasy readers.

How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It (The Siege #2) by K.J. Parker

How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It (The Siege #2) by K.J. Parker

“… what the people want is something that looks at first sight like real life, but which actually turns out to be a fairy tale with virtue triumphant, evil utterly vanquished, a positive, uplifting message, a gutsy, kick-ass female lead and, if at all possible, unicorns.” pg 11, ebook

K.J. Parker (pen name for Tom Holt) gives readers all of that in this book – sorry, minus the unicorns.

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The city has been under siege for decades. Readers are given the history of all that in the last book.

In this entry in the series, it is all about surviving and keeping hope alive against unbelievable odds. The enemy outside the gates outnumbers the survivors in the city by thousands. What hope can be had?

Enter Notker, a professional actor who, among other things, excels at mimicking city leaders.

“Accordingly, the death of Lysimachus – if true – was a devastating blow to me personally, purely because imitating him accounted for something like forty per cent of my income. Sure, you can still imitate people after they’re dead, but there just isn’t the same demand.” pg 24, ebook

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When Notker gets pulled into government, he shows an unexpected talent for keeping the city’s hopes alive. It is a delight finding out how he does all of it, so I won’t spoil it for you.

You don’t have to have read the first book in the series to appreciate this one. (I read the first months ago and didn’t really remember much of it.) But I imagine if you read them back to back, you’ll find some hidden gems tying the two books together.

“If you stopped to think about it you’d never do it, so don’t stop and think.” pg 98, ebook

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The most interesting character in the book is a tie between Notker and Hodda (the female lead, so to speak). Both develop as the story goes along in predictable and unpredictable ways. I loved every twist as the characters fought for their survival.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It is a cross between historical fiction and something that feels like a Shakespearean play. Highly recommended.