Jordan

Books in their short form in most instances aren't for me. It takes a lot of skill to do with few words what most struggle to do with many. There's a real skill in introducing characters, world and plot and wrapping it up in a crisp hundred-or-so pages. Conversely, my personal taste leads me to desire time almost as much as this mastery of the craft. By spending more time with the world and characters, the bond naturally becomes more powerful, multiplied by the magnitude of the writing.

Early on Sistah Samurai felt like it was taking every effort to introduce as many different Japanese things as possible in a way I found somewhat distracting. This shows best in the first introduction of the swords “My ride-or-dies, my katana and wakizashi, rode shotgun in pink lacquered sheathes on my hip.” and second “I unbelted Fuck-Around and Find-Out, my katana and wakizashi, and placed the blades along the bench beside me”. As a reader, I don't feel like I'm being trusted to understand through context even when there was a picture describing these terms before the first chapter.

This doesn't last long too long, but still irks me and comes back less thickly later. Once we're past that the blending of cultures is great. The personality of the writing is where it shines brightest through use of colloquial dialect. But the blended world of Japanese and black culture is a close second. The actual cohesiveness of the world is a bit shaky. The shamisen player in the ramen joint, but walkmen and CDs exist? Not impossible, but felt out of place. Normally I'm a bit put off by heavy leaning on nostalgia and references, but because Sistah Samurai wears them so readily on its sleeve, they don't bother me too much here, but can sometimes feel style-over-substance.

Overall, the package works more often than it doesn't and despite any issues I may have I enjoyed the read.

A really interesting tale that I can't help compare to Endurance. Too much of the book was spent setting up, but I imagine this is due to it being Non-Fiction and having to deal with limited sources to cite for some of the later portions directly leading to the Mutiny. Still a great read despite that.

This is a bit of a weird one as it almost feels like it's avoiding the main conflict. Thematically this fits given that's basically the modus operandi of the main character (even before they know there is a conflict).

We're pulled in close, flirting with the path to understanding, then quickly pulled backwards into confusion as we slowly spiral towards knowing what has and what will happen. This is the kind of book that once it grips you, you'll want to keep going and going.

From a character perspective, we're treated to quite a colourful cast that is painted vibrantly. While we don't spend a lot of time with some of them, due to their vibrancy they feel more fleshed out than they might have otherwise. Not all of the characters are good people, hell, most of them aren't, but they're well-defined.

We build our way to a crescendo leading to the finale, which sets my favourite sort of pacing for a horror novel. We spend the majority of the book learning of the characters, their history, their present and are left wondering, followed by a finale which not only caps off the questions we've been left with, but escalates into the conflict we'd been avoiding the whole time.

Overall, there wasn't really anything I disliked about this book. I didn't really mind that there were some references to very old animations which I had to look up. However, I can imagine some people wouldn't like that, or the way it's paced as it takes a while to reveal its hand.

With all the same perspectives as the previous books, we finally get to the crux of why the “storm” ever happened in the first place. The religion of the One True God has been spoken about constantly and run through the books until this point, but remained in the back seat until the latter half of book two. Now the curtain rises on Act Two and the religion of the One True God becomes a main point in the plot and focus of multiple perspectives.

But with the revelation about Leo, we also see the return of the Chiltaens to the fray – the force that initially enslaved the exiled Levanti and forced them to fight against Kisia – along with a Horse Whisperer of the Levanti who has been exiled for unknown reasons. There seems to be connections between these two and the One True God, both friendly and antagonistic.

The amount of smaller mentions in previous books that come back to be referenced makes the journey all-the-more satisfying, especially when we have been waiting for answers on much of it. A lot of what has happened in previous books is also re-contextualised with the knowledge we now have, adding extra depth and reflection to what we've already read.

While thus far focus has been more on individual characters and their movements with some touching on the war and politics, here we start to see the pieces move in the grand game this time around. Allegiances are thrown into question, armies are on the march and everyone is more fractured than they have ever been.

With one final book left in the series, we're provided with just as many new wrinkles as we are with answers and the state of the final book won't start on quite the landscape I expected, but brings promise of more good things to come (for the readers, at least).

Here we follow the same perspectives as the first book, with one addition; Miko, the now-deposed Empress on the run. Rah, the twice-exiled devout of the Levanti culture. Cassandra, failed assassin, whore, host and prisoner. We are joined by Dishiva, follower of Gideon and the new Levanti Empire. We start in the wake of the fall of the Ts'ai Empire and the rise of the Levanti Kisian Empire.

I struggled a little bit with Rah's actions and words not meeting in the first book and he opens up a bit better here. His perspective becomes one of the more interesting ones this time around due to effectively being directly opposed to the new Emperor; Gideon. Conversely, Cassandra falls to being much less interesting initially for effectively the same reasons we seen with Rah. She has failed to live up to even half of what she's said and spends a lot of time just being dragged along on other people's agendas, all the while being separated from the main action as she finally meets the Witchdoctor, whom she believes can help with her issue of hosting another entity. This promises to be interesting in time to come, but suffered a bit of a lull here. Miko poses the most interesting perspective, as she comes off of the losing of not only a battle, but her Empire. Left to retreat with only a single bodyguard and seek allies in now-hostile territory where the political landscape is equally as treacherous. Dishiva is an interesting one, as she brings to the fold a second perspective on the Levanti, people who had originally seemed victims of this whole affair, now suddenly among the prime powers. Dishiva has to deal with how much of the Levanti culture Gideon is willing to throw away “for the best interest of his people” and ask herself whether the cost is worth it.

The best part of this book is the exploration of not only cultures, but the blending of cultures and how much compromise of your own cultures and beliefs is the correct amount to make when we see new societies rise from the mix of existing ones. We have Rah on the one side holding tight to his original beliefs, but softening to some degree when confronted with Miko. Miko mirroring Rah. Gideon who seems to be making absolutely any compromise required to keep power. Dishiva in the middle completely unsure, but certain that other cultures are poisoning Levanti tradition.

If I had to point at one weakness for this book, it would be Cassandra's viewpoint which I felt was one of the stronger elements in the first book. We get some revelations on what she is and why she holds two personalities, but while every other viewpoint in the book has now fully converged, Cassandra's still mostly away on the side not really meshing completely with the rest of the story and slowly unfolding what is actually happening there.

Overall this was a great read and promises more with the remaining books in the series so long as they stick the landing.

Here we follow multiple perspectives; Miko, the bastard princess of an empire. Rah, the exiled captain of a wandering people. Cassandra, assassin, whore, and host to some form of entity and power. Two of these perspectives (Miko and Cassandra) are interesting enough from the off to have lead a solo book. I disliked Rah's initial chapters as his character didn't feel like it acted with the principles and honour he spoke of – and he speaks constantly of principles and honour.

Despite my initial dislike of Rah, I'd say this book is full of strong characters (even without having read the preceding Vengeance Trilogy), with political machinations, both known and unknown, casting shadows over everyone's words and actions, leaving you guessing at people's true motivations and allegiances. I'd potentially even argue that not having read the previous trilogy strengthened the book in some way as I assume some of the accusations being thrown around were events in those books.

We're fairly quickly seeing cross-over amongst the main perspective characters, while not initially directly meeting, supporting cast members cross paths, the same names are mentioned, machinations are spoken about from multiple sides. Multiple perspectives can be a strength and a failing depending on how they're weaved together and here it's a treat. Rather than constantly yearning to move back to another perspective, there's always something interesting happening in each.

If I had to point to any factor in the book that I didn't like, it would be the way that sometimes action scenes were glossed over a bit. These tend to be the bigger battles and it makes some sense that they're less important than the direct conflicts between named characters, but still felt a bit weird for a battle to be done in a couple of lines.

Overall there was little I didn't like about this book as it provides a great opening state of affairs to be resolved in the rest of the quadrilogy and mysteries yet to reveal.

Despite being written for children, these books continue to unfold at a great pace which keeps them interesting despite me no longer being 13. This is one of the books I remembered quite vividly as I always used to imagine going to Vampire Mountain myself. Neat lore for the series which we've not had a great deal of, but also many cool characters introduced along with some more set-up and foreshadowing.

Really interesting to read Gibson's interpretation of Alien 3. Despite the fact I didn't like the lack of Ripley, that's not what got me rating the book down. It has less action AND less horror than any of the prior books, the writing is repetitive and while there are some cool elements included like the non-Company Space Station, they're of little focus. Probably only interesting for Alien fans.

When I first read that the next Blacktongue book was a prequel covering The Daughters' War, I knew it was going to be divisive. Following up Kinch is big shoes to fill, and we've already been exposed to Galva's personality which was never going to carry the book for some people. I am not one of these people.

Thanks to the framing and Buehlman's methods of making the world feel bigger than it is, this felt like a historical fantasy and Galva's more dry personality fits for the subject matter of the third in a trio of wars so bad that the majority of the forces are made up of women and old people. There's a nice variety of characters, though we do mainly focus on a small handful, which rotate out throughout the book.

The writing maintains the level of quality I'd expect from Buehlman at this point and shows that he can switch genre/sub-genre masterfully as required by the story being told. Humour being exchanged from Blacktongue Thief for more horror and emotion here, with the war itself and Galva being forced at odds with her brother.

Probably the only disappointment for me is that Galva is tied to an experimental unit of corvid knights where each person leads two giant war-birds specially bred for fighting goblins, yet they feel like a relatively small part of the book for how big a part of Galva's character they make.

A really interesting account of the infamous female pirate Mary Read, through all parts of her life, mundane and mythical. The form of the writing painting the story almost as a fight against destiny where Mary merely searches for her name and place in life, ideally on the sea, moving from major life change to major life change as if it is nothing remarkable until we are finally met with Anne Bonny, Nassau and the Pirates' life - which even this, life sets to take from her.

Staying with the more action-oriented path and continues having much more character development than its movie, another surprisingly competent entry from ADF.

A very predictable book. The characters act how you expect, the plot unfolds how you expect. However it's all bundled into such a neat package that introduces and tackles its themes so well it's hard to do anything but love it - even if the main character's a little bit grating. The Patriarchial, Racist, Classist, Zealot society manages to feel quite real due to how it's developed which really helps the impact of the themes in the book.

ADF shows that action is much more their wheelhouse with Aliens beating out the movie by having just as much great action, but significantly more character work. The main issue I had with this adaption was that some of the most iconic lines were removed, but who could have known how iconic they'd be at the time?

A surprisingly competent adaption which fails to live up to the movie not because it's bad, but because it is competing with a masterpiece. The horror elements and xenomorph descriptions feel a bit glossed over, but it's nice to get a bit more of the crew.

This marks a strange book for me as I felt the character work was a bit lacking. As a dual-protagonist story, around 80% of the book is spent on one who interacts will a small changing cast, while 20% is spent on the other who has a small fixed cast. My main problem with the character is that outside of the two point of view characters and two side characters, there's not much fleshing out of anyone.

However, despite this I still really enjoyed reading it. The plot is an extremely simple revenge story with some magical realism sprinkled through it. The magical realism is mostly just there to provide a way to neatly deliver the over-arching theme of sins of the ancestor.

The part where this really shined for me was in the writing itself, painting extremely vivid images of scenes with more often than not very little going on. For this to be strong enough to outweigh the weak-to-middling characterisation is unusual for me.

Apparently George RR Martin did not write Fevre Dream.

It's hard to put words to this one, but it's worth reading anyway.