Velveteen Vs. The Early Adventures by Seanan McGuire

 

I love Seanan McGuire’s body of work.  (Note: I review a bunch of her books so I am copying part of some of my other reviews here to save time.). She has quickly become my favorite living writer and I feel very lucky that she is so prolific. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person. 

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. But the Velveteen Vs. series holds a very special place in my heart. 

When I was very sad and in a very rough place I needed a new audiobook to listen to, something to distract me from everything. And I found the first two Velveteen books on audible. They were perfect. They were exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. I loved the world Ms. McGuire had created where superheroes were a mix between reality tv stars and child actors. These were wonderfully developed characters that came alive and the fact that they had powers and domino masks didn’t make them feel any less real. 

I was overjoyed when Subterranean Press and NetGalley awarded me an eARC of this volume (I had already preordered my hardcover edition). I am thrilled that more people will get to read and enjoy Vel’s story. And I am beyond ecstatic that another volume is coming and that Vel’s story will come to a natural endpoint, even as I hope beyond hope that there will be more stories beyond the currently in-progress long awaited fourth book. 

This book is a gift. Enjoy it. 

Red Sonja Consumed by Gail Simone

  

Gail Simone is a treasure. I have loved her writing for years - whenever I saw her name on a comic book cover I knew I was in for a good time. I adored her run on the Secret Six and her take on Barbara Gordon is the definitive one for me. So when I found out she was coming out with her first prose novel I was excited! But when I realized it was a Red Sonja novel I was a little apprehensive. Red Sonja was never a character I had read or wanted to read. Although I love D&D and sword & sorcery stories, I had never been a fan of the scantily-clad-warrior-in-a-chainmail-bikini subgenre and I had never read or seen any Red Sonja in any medium. But I trusted Gail, so I requested an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher, and received one in exchange for an honest review. 

I was glad I trusted Gail. I enjoyed this book - I especially liked her way of starting every chapter with an excerpt of something, often scholarly work, that treated Sonja as a character out of myth or historical legend. 

Now, although I enjoyed the book, I didn’t particularly like the character of Sonja herself - the book starts out with her stealing from and betraying a lover, actions I was unable to forgive her for throughout the book. That colored my overall enjoyment. Some of the secondary villains felt unnecessary to the story and some late plot twists seemed unnecessary or poorly telegraphed. But these are minor quibbles. I will be happy to read the next Red Sonja novel Ms. Simone writes, or anything at all she comes up with. 

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

Generation ship? Cozy mystery? Auntie detective who knits? Sold!

I am a big fan of generation ship stories, so I was intrigued when I saw Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite on NetGalley and I was very happy to be granted an advanced reader copy by the publisher. This book was a lot of fun, but suffered for its short length. The world building was very interesting – unlike many generation ships, the technology on this ship allowed people to be reborn into newly created bodies, so each generation could be comprised of the same individuals. In addition, if someone wanted to take a “rest” from existing, their mind maps could be stored in a library until they felt like coming back. There are so many things built into these concepts that didn’t have room to breathe because this was just a Novella. I thought the drunk computer concept at the beginning was a little weak, but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope that this author writes more in this setting.

Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire (audiobook)

I was already a big fan of Ms. McGuire’s when the first wayward children book, Every Heart a Doorway, came out, and I loved it! As a kid who grew up loving the Oz series and resenting the Christian imagery in Narnia, it was right up my alley. It is a wonderful book and this is an excellent series, definitely deserving of its Best Series Hugo win.  In this series, the odd numbered books are the main timeline, and the even numbered books tell stories outside the main timeline - sometimes introducing us to new characters when they travel through their Doors, and other times showing up backstory of preexisting characters. 

I was overjoyed when NetGalley awarded me an eARC of the audiobook of Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear!

This story is an even numbered book, so it is not advancing the main story forward - it more of a character study of Nadya. We met Nadya way back when the gang went on a journey to resurrect Sumi. We hadn’t learned that much of her story except that her Door led to a world of water with turtles in it, and that she eventually made it back there. 

This story is heartbreaking - we learned that Nadya was abandoned at a Russian orphanage by a teenager who was planning on giving her up even before she saw that she was born with a missing arm. The orphanage part isn’t the heartbreaking part - it is the way Nadya is treated by the right wing religious couple who adopt her as an act of charity, not love. Nadya’s time in her world is wonderful but too brief, and I was so sad when she was ripped away at the end of the novella, heartened only by my memory of her ultimate happier ending. 

I enjoyed this narrator a great deal. 

I cannot wait to devour the next one!

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison

This book was fantastic! So worth waiting for!!!!

Like many people, I first encountered Katherine Addison when I found the Goblin Emperor on a bunch of awards ballots and was immediately enchanted. Within six months of reading it, I doubled back and listened to the audiobook  - that novel was charming and delightful and wonderful.  (I also adored her unrelated book, the Angel of the Crows, and I think more people need to read that.) I was thrilled beyond belief when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC for The Witness For the Dead, a related book in the same universe as The Goblin Emperor.  That book was a book of my heart -  It was the most enjoyable reading experience I had in months when I read it the first time.  I was even more exited two years ago when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC for The Grief of Stones, the direct sequel to the Witness for the Dead which I described at the time as “perfection itself” - a description I still stand by. 

In anticipation of the Tomb of Dregons, the long awaited, third book in the Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy, I recently re-listened to audiobooks of the other books in this universe, so I have been soaking in it for weeks now. I was ecstatic when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

This book was a joy from beginning to end. It picked up right where The Grief of Stones ended, with Thara Celehar still suffering from the loss of his ability to speak to the dead after his encounter under the hill of werewolves in the last volume. The treatment of his pain and loss feels true without being maudlin or overwhelming. Without spoiling things, the resolution to that plot point is quite satisfying. This story takes unexpected twists and turns that keep you invested in the characters and their problems. The return of some characters and plot points from prior books is perfectly done without swamping Celehar’s story. I loved this book madly and am so so so sorry it is over. I take from the marketing that this is wrapping up the Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy, but I hope this is not the last we see of these characters. 

The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison

 

Wohoo! Unexpected novella in a universe I cannot get enough of!

Like many people, I first encountered Katherine Addison when I found the Goblin Emperor on a bunch of awards ballots and was immediately enchanted. Within six months of reading it, I doubled back and listened to the audiobook  - that novel was charming and delightful and wonderful.  (I also adored her unrelated book, the Angel of the Crows, and I think more people need to read that.) I was thrilled beyond belief when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC for The Witness For the Dead, a related book in the same universe as The Goblin Emperor.  That book was a book of my heart -  It was the most enjoyable reading experience I had in months when I read it the first time.  I was even more exited two years ago when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC for The Grief of Stones, the direct sequel to the Witness for the Dead which I described at the time as “perfection itself” - a description I still stand by. 

In anticipation of the long awaited, third book in the Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy, I recently re-listened to audiobooks of the other books in this universe, so I have been soaking in it for weeks now. Which is why I was so surprised when Subterranean Press announced a standalone novella in the same universe! I was ecstatic when Subterranean Press and NetGalley gave me an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

This book was absolutely fantastic. It introduced a whole new set of characters in a whole new place in another tale set into motion by the destruction of the emperor’s airship - the same explosion that began the story in the Goblin Emperor.  The protagonist was a scholar accused of stealing an artifact believed to be the key to an even greater treasure, but he knows he is innocent. The story eventually solves the mystery of who is the real thief and, in the process, tells us about scholarship, love, duty, and betrayal. It is hard to describe without spoiling the story. I heartily recommend this to anyone who likes Katherine Addison and to anyone who hasn’t read anything by her yet. This book is wonderful. 

Motheater by Linda H. Codega

 

As someone who loves D&D and who has been a passionate reader of io9 since before Charlie Jane Anders left, I was very impressed by the writing of Linda H. Codega. I really enjoyed their articles about the OGL fiasco and I thought their reporting was top notch and their writing style was clear and enjoyable. 

So I was very excited when their first novel was previewed in io9 and even more excited when I got an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher. 

This novel was interesting. Like I’ve said about the novels of Chuck Tingle and Stephen King, I think I would very much enjoy a novel by Linda Codega that didn’t have genre elements. 

The book starts with Bennie, a woman who moved to a mining town in Appalachia with her boyfriend, got a job at the mining company, and made a best friend there with whom she was looking into suspicious mining deaths. But then her friend was killed in some sort of mining incident and in the aftermath she then broke up with her boyfriend and was living on the fringe of poverty while trying to figure out a way to take the mining company down. At this point the story begins when she finds Motheater, a witch who had been trapped in the mountain for 150+ years. This fascinating setup is undermined by alternating chapters with Motheater’s perspective from before she was stuck into the mountain. I was bored by these flashback chapters and I felt they added very little to the overall narrative. Furthermore, the book doesn’t really mine the time traveling culture shock or the realization that magic is real very well. There are token attempts but they feel halfhearted at best. 

In addition, I was disappointed that Bennie never got justice for her best friend or all of the other dead miners and that part of the driving of the plot was abandoned without much explanation. Furthermore, the explicit  tying in of the magic to Christianity was quite offputting to me (and presumably will be to many other non-Christian readers).

 But when this book worked, it worked. The language was often lyrical. The blue jay familiar was a joy. I look forward to Linda Codega’s next book.