booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

NONA THE NINTH deals with a necromantic version of plurality in a way whose groundwork was laid in GIDEON THE NINTH and HARROW THE NINTH. Much as "one flesh, one end" is undeniably queer, Camila and Palamedes display a version of plurality, which is necromantic in its origins, but familiar to me in its general shape.  I’m a singlet, not a plural system, but several important people in my life are plural, and so much of how Nona interacts with Camilla and Palamedes echoes my interactions with those people in my own life. There’s a line in the second half of the book that makes it clear that at least some of the characters know about plurality, even if what’s happening with them is a specific magical version which canonically involves souls. In some ways plurality is more canonical to the text than any particular style of queerness (except perhaps for sapphic attraction), though this book (and the whole series) is undeniably and wonderfully queer.

The worldbuilding gets more of a chance to breathe this time around. GIDEON THE NINTH was a murder mystery until other things started being much more important. HARROW THE NINTH is a fever dream of confusion which suddenly snaps into coherence at the 90% mark. NONA THE NINTH is a breath, pausing for a story which has a clear framework, a lovable protagonist, and a sense of rhythm and pattern to her days. This calm amidst the storm is ripped open by a descent into war and the deterioration of her body as the day approaches when the Locked Tomb will open. I like the interludes as John tells the story of how this started. These sections helped with pacing and framing, as well as bringing the extremely welcome event of someone actually explaining what the fuck is going on for once. 

As the third book in the series, NONA THE NINTH continues Several things begun in earlier books, specifically, but not only, the fates of a great many characters such as Camila and Palamedes. There's so much in each book that it's very difficult to know which details will be picked up later and which ones have been completely handled in their first treatment, but this does eventually give some answers about things first raised in earlier books. There’s an entirely new storyline related to Nona, her relative newness, and everyone she cares about at home and the school. She’s just so happy in a way that incorporates strangeness and allows for a joking grotesquerie, effortlessly finding beauty in weirdness. It also leaves a huge thing for later, promising that the Locked Tomb will be opened, even counting down to that promised day before leaving the aftermath of its opening to be handled in the next book, ALECTO THE NINTH.

There are many fewer memes than the previous books, but the few that are in there are expertly chosen to devastating effect. There's one near the very end that I refuse to spoil which threads the needs between fantastically illustrating the meaning of the surrounding text and needing to be imperceptible to anyone not already in the know. I applaud the execution of it, even if by its nature it's frustrating that this is what the author decided to include. Masterfully done, I tip my cap.

As was the case for HARROW THE NINTH, if someone tried to read this as their introduction to the series, it would likely make sense almost all the way through... and then the ending would be strange and sideways because it relies on several things established in previous books as well as bringing many returning characters who have been more thoroughly introduced elsewhere. Also, the way that the John interludes are explaining how things came to be like this would be a bit strange without the grounding provided in GTN and HTN.

I think this is my favorite book in the whole series, and I'm looking forward to what ALECTO THE NINTH brings.

ROLLING THE DEEP is the story of the cruise ship Atargatis, sent to find mermaids or fake it well enough to make an entertaining documentary that played fast and loose with the truth. Originally published before its better-known full-length follow-up, INTO THE DROWNING DEEP, ROLLING IN THE DEEP is a bloody horror story of curiosity and corporate greed driving a whole ship of people into a bloodbath at the hands of "mermaids" which evolved to be our predators. 

It doesn't seem like it's specifically trying to leave something for later. Even knowing that a sequel eventually was made, this is a complete story that can be enjoyed on its own. The cast is pretty large for a novella but stays focused on a subset of named characters to make it manageable.

I like it, I just wish I'd been able to get a hold of it before reading INTO THE DROWNING DEEP, but this is harder to find copies of.

Kate and Curran's new and hopefully relaxing life in Wilmington is disrupted when one of the people Kate rescued in magic tides offers them a prize too great to turn down in exchange for rescuing a town trapped in a forest. 

One of my favorite uses of world building is the way that the antagonist in the forest is specifically relevant to Kate's magic and to Curran's history in a way that makes sense and isn't contrived. Because so much of the original series focused on Kate and her family in dealing with her father, it would be weird for all of that to vanish (especially when her father is still trying to be a force in Conlan's life). Instead, Kate is figuring out what her family can look like, acknowledging their history but not reacting based on worries about whether her father would approve of what she decides. Before, she had a bit of a knee jerk reaction where if it was what her father wanted she was determined to do the opposite. Now, she knows what she wants and what she cares about separate from him. It definitely doesn't hurt that he's locked in a separate dimension, which greatly limits his influence and effectiveness. 

As a sequel to MAGIC TIDES, MAGIC CLAIMS picks up not too long afterwards, when Kate, Curran, and their son, Conlan, are settling into the new rhythm of their lives away from the Keep, the Pack, and Kate's frequently murderous family. The specific storyline related to the town in the forest is new. While it is jump-started by a small connection to the previous book, as soon as it gets going it introduces and resolves a new storyline with a town to rescue. This is definitely not the last book in this series, and there are several very clear indications of what might happen in the future. They're trying to prepare for what will happen when the fractures in the Atlanta pack hit a breaking point. Curran is older and wiser, able to imagine something much more nuanced than get all the shape shifters here and protect each other. At least partly due to his relationship with Kate and their adoption of Julie in the original series, he has more nuanced and less xenophobic ideas about family, belonging, and protection than he did when he built the Pack as a teenager, finally ready to create a place where many kinds of people, not only shapeshifters, can live and thrive. 

I like getting to see from Curran's perspective how much he cares about as a Kate as a person. He's finally in a place where he can be devoted to her well-being and happiness without trying to protect her in a way that would make her feel stifled. 

The storyline could mostly make sense if someone started here without reading any of the previous books, but it would be much better to at least go back to MAGIC TIDES. Overall, the series does a good job of explaining what matters from the original Kate Daniels books and various spinoff stories, but because there's so much background, trying to start with this second book would likely be a bit much.

This is a great continuation of an excellent series, I'm ready for more in this world as soon as they become available.

Ava breaks Shane out of prison at the very start, then, with a few different configurations of crew members, they pull off a series of heists to get supplies to their families and hopefully mess things up for the military exploiting their planet. Cyrus is a member of that military, newly graduated and ready to climb the hierarchy. When he runs into the outlaws it complicates his worldview and he starts to think his commander might not be dealing fairly with their planet.

I was just familiar enough with Bonnie and Clyde as an idea that I came into this prepared for major character death, and it's a good thing I was ready. This is the kind of story where all of the characters are fascinating but I didn't particularly think any of the main characters were unambiguously the good guys. My anchor amidst the ambiguous characterization is that someone gradually emerges as a definitive antagonist to the cluster of antiheroes. 

Cyrus hits me oddly in the trio of protagonists. I'm wary of books which expect me to sympathize with the cop character, but this ends up playing out closer to "everything sucks, there are few right answers, but supporting this system is definitely the wrong answer." There's a way that Ava and Shane are treated as protagonists which I don't come across very often, but I generally appreciate. They're antiheroes, reactive and tactical, with some plans but not a great sense of strategy. Each of their moves is based on it being better than the previous move, but they're young, don't have very much support, and the way that they've ended up as outlaws feels very impulsive. When they stumble upon away and make a bigger impact they don't quite know if even this will work or do anything. They're socially isolated (partly by choice) from the society of their backwater planet, seeing their families only every few months between jobs. Their parents are doing their best in a system where existence is a slow demise, and there's a hopelessness which Ava and Shane have honed into desperation. 

I like this more mature version of Kate, I’m not quite sure how old she is here, but it’s been at least a decade since MAGIC BITES. She’s at least in her late thirties, possibly in her early forties, and she makes a few references to what she would’ve done before and how she’s changed. She’s consistent with the threads of that earlier self, but she’s older, wiser, and has a very different set of resources and connections than she had by the time the main series ended. I hope this can be a good starting point for new fans, and I’m excited to see where it goes.

The main plot deals with bringing a kidnapped child home. Kate tracks him down and deals with the people responsible. Implicitly, later books will deal with Kate and Curran continuing to set up their new home, as well as what Conlan is like as he grows up, but this doesn’t make any attempt at a cliffhanger because it’s more about the general path forward rather than trying to keep any particular storyline dangling open.

This is the first book in a new series of novellas within the broader world of the Kate Daniels books. One of the biggest changes as a long time reader of the series is that this is narrated by Kate, Curran, and briefly by Conlan rather than just Kate. There have been various other stories in spinoff series with different narrators, but it’s new to have Kate narrating alongside someone else. It would be very hard for me to really assess how much the summaries of the backstory would make sense to someone who had this is their starting point. I think it does a pretty good job of bringing up only as much is actually matters to this story, which is the only really fair thing to ask for a world developed already through so many stories. I particularly enjoyed getting Curran's perspective. I have read most of the Curran POV stories, but it was nice to get this in an intentional way rather than as an addendum. There's a particular moment between Curran and Conlan that helped me get a sense of who Curran is as a father to a son who's now old enough to understand what he's saying.

I excited for more of Kate and Curran, and I'll have to keep an eye on Conlan as this isn't the only new book where he appears. Splitting new books into a cluster of parallel/intertwining series is a very smart way to keep each specific series focused, not all needing to involve the very extensive cast of characters which had built up in the original series.